Laugh, the devil

The town had been abandoned, for years.

And so I walked its empty streets
and scoured its vacant rooms,
wading through crumbling drywall
and cast-off scrap metal.

If it were Thanksgiving two decades ago,
I would watch at six AM as the cafe awoke
and they wrote the holiday greeting
and turkey specials in chalk calligraphy.

Hotel neon would burst and brighten,
and maids would push restocking carts
through filled parking lots
and streaks of asphalt snow.

But one day they would move the highway.

So doors would latch
and weeds would rise,
windows crack into spiderwebs
and shatter over cinderblock doorstops.

While three miles north
in the shadows made of red canyon handpaint,
earlier villages would be recalled

and the devil would laugh
through blackened hollow eyes,
riding atop his bull.