Pest Control

-
Pest Control

A stark similitude of will, the two of us, 
nesting tight beneath the vacant eaves
of something greater than our creeping selves,
suspended like a flaky uvula of dust 
and salivary substance. We do not ask 
for much: a corner we can call our own,
a sturdy surface off of which to hang
in full assurance of stability, a little space
to copulate. But when has similarity
of motive ever sufficiently deterred
a stronger will from sweeping clean the weaker 
one that stands in its auspicious way?
So it is with a stream of pressurized repellant
I send this prayer—let my hypocrisy be not 
the needed grounds for like extermination.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Line of Thinking

-
THE LINE OF THINKING The line of thinking runs  that given time enough—the funds— we might yet get in front of this.  That one day honey just does the list, and lo, the fixer-upper’s up and fixed,  the lawn at last trimmed low and all the laundry done, so give  it but a week or so and we'll at last begin to live the life we always imagined as something more than a growing list of pending repairs.  Of course, all this will come to pass only after the ballots are cast, the offices swept and emptied out  for our officials, who will, no doubt,  enact our will and set right the deluded line of thinking we’ve too long been governed by. Then once the baby sleeps through the night— or say instead the baby graduates and vacates the house—that will be our ticket to kick up our feet the way we've dreamed about and somehow come to expect, when we’ll rest as deep and long as Orion in repose, belt unclipped and bow leaned back in that ever-elusive posture of "rel...
Read more

the road behind the hill

-
the road behind the hill At 8:13, the solitary oak outside the kitchen window pulls down the sun with groping, fibrous fingers. Shadows stroke the stucco wall in stenciled lines, and on the counter, store-bought casserole is cold. His mother snores. He creaks the screened-in door to slide his bare feet over the concrete stoop in callous whispers. Outside, the evening air is soft as puppy’s breath. The grass is wet.        His mother’s face was wet the day his dad    had went away, wet Carolina sunset    streaks of red on cheeks that he had kissed.    John had moved in that year, a cheshire smile    from cheek to cheek that said “just call me dad,”    but whiskey fists can’t hide behind a smile.       Cicada song blankets his lilting stride across the lawn, his shuffle leaving strokes of green on cloth of dew...
Read more

on finding an eviction notice

-
on finding an eviction notice but we are young today, my dear, so let us dance — spinning to the sound of neighbors shouting upstairs, then pirouetting past the pile of unpaid bills that peer out smugly from their plastic window sills with urgent, time-stamped stares — let's laugh a laugh that resounds above the city sounds of taxicabs that pinball past in seedy streets below, a laugh that drowns the drone of evening news evaporating through the plastered walls too thin to block the mumbles of the neighbor's TV set: the traffic's clogged again on East Magnolia St — and then let's sing, my dear, let's sing the sort of song that takes the smoggy rain of weeping city skies [drumming the window-unit that hangs itself outside like wire-dangled sneakers] and turns it into tin-roof rain on farmhouse nights, a liquid lullaby to hush our streetlight minds and settle us both in sleep — and when we wa...
Read more