This is the time of insects here in the Interior. Here at Mattie’s Pillow, we hear the buzz of yellowjackets everywhere. There’s a nest in the hay barn, one in the eaves above our grill (logical place, if you’re a yellowjacket), and one in the greenhouse. They are in a perpetual state of agitation; any vibration or movement near the nest sets them off.
So, it’s time for a poem about an insect. Have one crawl through the poem, or have it land on a line somewhere. Be amazed at it, or be indifferent. Let sound be part of the poem, the small peripheral sounds that you don’t notice at first, until they stop.
Here’s one. Send me one of yours and I’ll post it here!
.
The Stink Bug on Joe’s Shirt
We talk in sun
then the sudden chill
of cumulus, stacked
high with moisture, then heat
at our backs, on our faces,
the scrubbed blue
sky. You lean against
a lounge chair. Your hair,
.
wild as the clouds,
curls with the charge
and buzz that fills
your blood. We talk.
We watch your face.
The cloud passes, all
that roiling not yet
enough to loose sparks,
and the blue shadows,
your eyes. A bug
.
iridescent,
a small bronze shield, totters
up your shirt, legs
like shaved whiskers,
bent to cling above
the “l” in “devil,”
climbing up the curled
tail toward your shoulder,
all it needs for a cliff.
.
Someone reaches
to flick it where it gleams.
Your prize:
the grown-back hair
the numbness gone
the sun in its place
and you striding
beneath it—one
bug suddenly flicked
away. A stink.
Mattie's Pillow 