Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Animal War: The Battle of Cherryhill Ln.

They came as the sun beat lowly
southward beating through
weak cloud structures and
leaves in transit

Twenty on the molding of
my childhood room
these Asian ladies with layered backs
one hard, uncompromising

the other a flecking
vein-matrix of stiff tissue
introduced by science
"My God, what have we done?"

So soon they forget the fields of their fathers
and the great aphid uprising
the silent, micro weevil, the living salt
praying nobly, like red-speckled raptors

one breeze from the north
and like the poor they scratch the walls
of this McMansion, like I am some
congenial matron of insected living things

No sir. Not me. Not with this big blue
can of RAID. And my mother's vacuum.
The niveous hemlock flowers. Plinking
through the reinforced tubes and gray roaring.

2 comments:

Gregory Bem said...

Some poor lost their fingernails scratching a long time ago. Now it's a question of blood and how well the clots work.

Jeff Brennan said...

that question was answered in the form of a question. As in "What is" like on the game shows that used to touch our lives in small ways.