| Arsenic Lobster poetry journal |
Issue Thirty-six Winter 2014 |
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| To the Girl Who Talked to Summer Insects Karen J Weyant It all started that summer your father worked second shift. You waited by the front door, hands pressed hard against a ripped screen checkered with gnats and mosquitos. When a speckled moth landed, flexed its wings beneath your fingers, you whispered the dangers, surprised when it listened, and then flew away. You heard Junebugs plummet the bedroom windows, admired their courage, but told them it was no use. You are never getting inside. You cupped ladybugs in your hands for luck, apologized to the quick flash and glint of the green and gold beetles you flicked away wanting to save your mother’s tomato plants. Some insects were silent and ambivalent, others angry or lost — A wasp buzzed and fumed when your brother knocked its nest from the garage roof, a single cricket sawed its wings and chirped. Even now, when you are old enough to know better, you walk by a vacant lot where a single katydid calls for winter. Its mantra Kate, Kate, Kate, so insistent you have come to believe that is your name. |
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