Somewhere between asking me if I came and what my boundaries were,
He told me that his mother was a snake-handler,
Not some quaint gypsy woman with a woolen shawl like you’d see on a circus poster,
But more like a Minoan snake goddess,
Except from the wet Appalachian hills of West Virginia.

Her name was Lucille,
And she was a Pentecostal,
Only five foot two, with long red hair and a flair for seeking out the devil,
Which she found in her son,
The devil – floating over his body like a caul.

She fucked him for one decade – ten years,
Before he reared back upon his boyish cloven-hooves,
Eyes flashing and fingers balled into a small, damp fist,
To punch her straight away on her holy freckled nose,
Causing it to bleed and him to flee from the hills and the snakes,
And into my bed,
His mother was a snake-handler.