the afternoon

winter sunlight,

a magnifying mirror propped

on the windowsill. Some skin over my

breastbone was swollen, I pressed down

and in, on either side of the tiny hill.

And where had I ever seen a snake

strike by flying through the air, but out of the

little half-egg mound a six-inch

viper, yellow-green, shot,

and I pushed again, and a second Worme

(medieval for a dragon) streaked.

EEUUwww, as anyone sane would say,

anyone raised by a mother who kept larvae

in jars with leaves—they named one

“Mommy’s Disgusting.” As a child I had seen how my

mother looked at her drunken husband,

and now I had expelled the devil, like

gangrene reptile milk from my rib-skin.

Maybe this is the pornography

the great critic sniffed out in me.

There’s not much some of us can see of the world,

solo in a room, like sitting on my

mother’s lap in the car, on the highway, when my

dad swerved as we passed a woman’s

leg separated from her torso on the macadam

highway and my mom with angelic aplomb

turned my head into her breast.

Centipede

Woken sober supine—at the top of the wall,

along the edge of the ceiling—

the blurred, oval dark of a roof-leak

or a creature. Put on glasses, pick up

binoculars—

a jointed insect, 6 inches long,

8 inches with the fringe of its legs

oval around it,

antennae the length of its body again

at the front. If I could have spared it, if I could have

caught and released—but slept while it woke

above my open mouth? I got

the junior broom—and missed. The creature

let go,

slid down

the wall onto my bureau—it rippled,

silky and swirling, over embroider—and the

centispear of straws stabbed down,

scattering crystal and jet, and then the

acrobat swivel dancer crawled

forward away from its back two dozen

legs, and turned over slowly, in its fine

tassels. Of course I am a killer, I am

human. There had been two lives

in the apartment, now there is one. Outside

the window and down, the flame poplar

sways south and north, mourning for the earth.

Yes

Did you forget you’d killed it. Did you go back a week later

looking for it, did you pick up the coral and

turquoise necklace like the one you gave Muriel—

sea where mountain was, mountain

where sea. And the one made of the tiniest shells—

magenta, ivory, brown, from Niihau,

which Carl gave you, and the Jane Austen pendant from lucille.

Are you a ravener of your home.

When you saw the reversed teacup did you

remember the remains were under it.

Were you curious to see them. Would you look at them

with an eye eager, self-pitying, moral, aesthetic.

And how had you killed them. With a small broom used

as a clutch of straw daggers.

And when you were in your hunting frenzy

did you feel fear, and horror, and a spear-aimer’s

attention. And under the cup now do you find