A Story with Lots of Bugs in it Eventually

from Children of the Anxious City by Al Russell

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lyrics

So yes we know our teachers are dying,
and we are dying, our tribes are dwindling,
kids I’m looking at you
giving you these little
bright bulbs to string around
my tomb stone like a barbed wire
but only to blink my spirit
into the dark world rather
than keep things out
or in.

So as I was thinking
this lofty human bullshit
the grubworm came
jiggling like a jazz vibraphone,
heat-seeking missile
stop-motion flopping
toward my molded boot
close in shape and size
to the lovable and noble
roley-poley bug, but a gross
antagonistic daguerreotype
to squish, to retch, to swoon, to kill it. I killed it.

So when I said words are a swarm of black flies
thickening the sick
orange of that street light (as in, that one),
this is what I meant:

credits

from Children of the Anxious City, released January 14, 2019

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about

Al Russell North Carolina

Al Russell is a graduate of the MFA program at the University of New Hampshire. She is a poetry editor at Outlook Springs literary journal. She is also an ordained minister of the Church of the Subgenius. She lives in North Carolina.