When my friend José Oseguera—author of the wonderful poetry collections The Milk of Your Blood and And This House Is Only a Nest—invited me to participate in an online protest reading he was organizing, I was honored. I also knew I’d need to write something new for the occasion. The event, “100 Days of Protest,” took place this past Tuesday evening on Zoom … and, typically for me, I sat down to write “The Details” just a few hours prior. Watch and/or read below. (The video is queued up to the start of the poem.)
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedThe devil is in the details
The fox is in the henhouse
The goats are in the garden
The wolf is at the door
The eagle has landed
The ox is in the mire
The barbarians are at the gates
The dog turns to its own vomit
The wolf is in sheep’s clothing
The chickens have come home to roost
But the horse is in the hayloft
And Elvis has left the building
The bull is in the china shop
The bear is in the beehive
The deer is in the headlights
The canary is in the coal mine
The snake is in the grass
The cat is in the cradle
The baby is in the bathwater
The bathwater’s out the window
The ants are in the sugar
The dish ran away with the spoon
The cat has swallowed the canary
The walls have ears, the better to hear
The proof is in the pudding
The pudding is cracked and shriveled
The check is in the mail
But the bank has gone to ground
The devil is in your details
The wolf is in the changing room
His peanut butter is in your chocolate
And the rabbit, it done died
The fox is in the counting house
The bear is by the bike path
The wolf is at the oxen
And the gates are in the mire
The barn is burning to kill the mice
The frying pan is in the fire
The village is burning to save a buck
The smoke gets in your eyes
The poison is in the well
The blood is in the water
The sharks are on the prowl
The fingers are in every pie
The devil is in the details
The devil is in the henhouse
The devil is in the garden
The devil is at the door
The devil does not wear Prada
The devil’s dressed in blue
The mourners are all in black
The devil’s tongue is crimson
Joshua judges Ruth
Leviticus numbers Deuteronomy
Bleach is the best disinfectant
Stick in your thumb, pull out a plum
The moon is down, the eagle has crashed
One if by land, two if by ICE
Take the gun, leave the cannoli
Forget it, Jake, it’s Chinatown
The stars are falling from the sky
The dog turns to its own comet
Democracy is in retrograde
Liberty has left the building
The money changers are in the temple
But the rebels are in position
We’re fashioning plowshares into flails
We drive them out on
Three . . .
Two . . .
One . . . ∅
