Author: crow

I'm a writer and a dabbler. I live in Southern California.

Poem 20141113

crow

The wasps appeared overnight
It seems
Huddling under the eaves of the house

I’d only ever seen them at night
No stray, menacing fliers
Just a tight ball of yellow and black bodies
Huddling together
Protecting their mother

And if they had stayed that way–
But instead they stung you twice
And went after our daughter’s face
But thankfully she was not stung

Still

I made war on them
In a sweatshirt and long jeans and gloves
A dust-mask and a hoodie, closed down tight around my face
The mask fogged my glasses
And I wore a headlamp with a red light so
They wouldn’t have a light to follow

I needed the lamp because I attacked at night
While they were sluggish, drowsy, dreaming wasp-dreams
And sprayed them with something so toxic
They fell onto the cardboard boxes I had laid out to catch their corpses
Sounding like shelled peanuts falling from a great height

The next morning
I counted twenty-five
And hoped they all perished together in those few seconds
So none would be alone.

Poem 20141112

crow1 Comment

I’d like to write a poem every day and see where it takes me. Maybe I’ll write a brand new poem each time. Maybe I’ll post revised versions of poems. Maybe I won’t do anything. Who knows.

Here’s the first one.

We could hear the couple
In the next room
Well, I could hear them since
You slept on and on
While they moaned
And the man said “don’t stop”
And the woman obviously didn’t
And I closed my eyes and tried to
Remember what the neighbors looked like
Tried to picture them in my mind
But stopped myself from waking you

You needed your sleep
After all
And I was the only one afflicted
With the sounds of lust or love or just
Hooking up
And I stopped myself from waking you
Kept my hands to myself
And you didn’t wake up to hear them
And the feelings
Weren’t contagious
After all