A praying mantis offers up its last flutter, seizes, falls.
Cracking on a brick step,
its abdomen releases one fat maggot
which saunters forth the first of nine.
Empty casket, open womb.
The corpse of a little boy wastes in the parlor,
his hair oiled and combed too neat,
eyes stiff open.
Mosquitoes refuse him but flies don’t.
Campfire bacchanalia.
Brown glass bottles singing in the leaves.
Passing opossums raid an uncapped butter bowl
and glory in the fat. Dip the snout in the loot!
Then, vomit.
A child, swiping for a lost peach under the bed
pulls out a yellow mouse, dead.
Later when she eats the fruit, and always,
she tastes blood instead of juice.
An image of lust: a flock of chickens
consuming a nest of black ants.
Soon as the harried ant emerges from its hold
a stabbing beak swoops down.
And the anthill never runs…
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