Archive
My Bug Collection of Stories
I.
I squash a lightning bug and smear its glowing pieces across my cheeks. The killing is a dare, and within the adolescent caste system, I become a warrior. But beyond this June night, boldness is no triumph. Parents swat brazen children. Entomologists place lids on jars and pin down grasshoppers.
II.
I learn to turn myself inside out, wear on the surface my skeleton, peek out from behind my sternum, corral developing breasts in a boney white fence. Bugs survived millions of years just like this.
III.
Some insects click. Some hiss. I rub my exposed shoulder blades together ’til they moan. It is the sound rocks make while waves dull their edges.
IV.
My bones weave around me like basket reeds. I sit inside with berries and flowers and bread for grandmother. I swing through the forest on the arm of a little girl. I let her face the wolf.
V.
Bugs developed wings long before bats and birds. I think about that prehistoric moment, insects flying safely in the air, no predators evolved enough to pursue them. I want to be like that, a few steps ahead of danger.
VI.
With a flashlight and a book, I crouch beneath the covers. I hide inside a wooden horse, preparing to sneak out and infest the city.
VII.
A life can be less than a day if you’re a mayfly. But if you’re born queen of a termitarium, you’ll last five decades. Butterflies and moths live only months or weeks, so many drawn helplessly to the light of my flickering face. I am a warrior again. I hold behind my back a net on the end of a stick.
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And the Crickets Outside the Window
mussed sheets
that smell
his sudden wanting
another season delirious
and egg-heavy
she says
I thought of you
but was tired
the unending scrape
of male wings
it’s easier to come
between
my own fingers
her unapologetic body
her articulating legs
he folds her to one side
dreams his way
into her
here we wait
this we call song
Exoskeletons
Desert magician, darkling
beetle — imagine
if you woke
to find your lost twin lying
empty alongside
you in bed —
dead. Or if in the middle
of, at work, import-
ant drivel,
you came unfastened. Do you
step with care or kick
the useless
you aside, pretend you do
not see it lying
there? Or, con-
sider, lost in a roman-
tic declaration,
the likely
embarrassment when a bone-
splitting crack is heard.
The shell falls
away revealing nothing
over and over,
but itself.
by Wendy Vardaman
Counting Monarchs in Kansas City
for David Hensley
In the Flint Hills
about two hours west of where
I am standing on the corner
of Independence and Olive
I remember how
the ranger at the Tall Grass Prairie Preserve
uttered the words dark clouds like a mantra.
These migrating insects
have navigated drought, tall buildings
and moving traffic of all kinds:
SUVs, trucks, triple-trailers.
Miles of hot asphalt
as far as anyone’s eye can see
but it is their blood
telling them where
and how to go.
Most of the third grade class
are making paper airplanes
but some are making trouble
calling me back
to the gritty life
of this green oasis.
White sheets of paper
are tossed at the blue sky.
Who can fly their small craft
the farthest?
I am called upon to judge
or referee these contests
by the children
and still manage to keep one eye out
for black and orange wings
on their way to an oyamel tree
in the mountains of Mexico.
Determined to continue
60, 61, 62, 63, 64 —
satisfied this quarter hour
has been well spent.
Author’s note: Please, plant milkweed (Asclepias species) in Spring of 2008 across the country where Monarchs migrate. This is the only plant these amazing creatures will be able to utilize in the cycle of caterpillar to pupae to butterfly and, unfortunately, milkweed is being eradicated as an unwanted weed across the U.S.
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Cabbage Whites
They must have trekked through the shadeless trenches
Of what had been the rapeseed field, until they came
To the warm-white, smooth, and alien face of the turbine’s stem,
Scaled it some way, and fallen into metamorphic sleep.
You might think, almost, they wanted to be rocked
By the pulse of great white wings, beating above them.
by Lucy Kempton
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Bees
They lie scattered
along dusty windowsills,
their half-moon corpses
like white crosses
on the interstate,
and we, who are drunk
on survival, who are as small
as we’ve imagined ourselves
in nightmares, need
to know that they didn’t feel
any pain, that their tiny lives
were worth living, that they died
in search of sweetness.
by Andy P.
qarrtsiluni 