a.e. stallings | triolet on a line apocryphally attributed to martin luther

Poetry Dispatch No. 87 | July 8, 2006

Triolet on a Line Apocryphally Attributed to Martin Luther by A.E. Stallings

Why should the Devil get all the good tunes,
The booze and the neon and Saturday night,
The swaying in darkness, the lovers like spoons?
Why should the Devil get all the good tunes?
Does he hum them to while away sad afternoons
And the long, lonesome Sundays? Or sing them for spite?
Why should the Devil get all the good tunes,
The booze and the neon and Saturday night?

A. E. Stallings lives in Athens, Greece. Her first collection, Archaic Smile (University of Evansville Press, 1999), won the Richard Wilbur Award. Her work has been included in The Best American Poetry 1994 and 2000, and the Pushcart Prize XXII Anthology.