Dorchester

The last kingdom of
cyanide beetle power
all the besieged insects of the
kitchen cabinets, the swarms
of ants following the ant-smell
trails to my chocolate raspberry cocoa,
the fat flies spiraling near
the lights, the cockroaches at the
daycare center outlasting the exterminator—
yours is the kingdom, but you don't need me
to say that. Insect-mind, what do you say
to human mind? Solitary spiders
collective bee brilliance, the bloodsuckers:
mosquitoes, leeches…my kind hates yours
because you are so small and crushable,
so helpless against us and yet you survive
so stubbornly in such great numbers and
could care less about us—you never even
acknowledge us—not a nod or a wave
or a flip on your back to be scratched.
we hate that you don't need us,
don't have fur or mother-love—that's why
we like bees the most—they honor their Queen—
& you won't talk to us.  You are a sign
of filth, of disease, of the breakdown
of the boundary of inside and out,
of domestic order, of human control; you sneak
through, under the radar, procreate in dark corners
and colonize our kitchens, our
gardens our civilization infiltrating inner chambers
with thousands of miniscule unshod
feet and weird compound eyes.
you remind us of
our least recognized
nonvertebrate selves;
we'll never admit in
our room full of brain
is a cell or two that
pulses a history
of our insect mind
pre-verbal, pre-one specialized cell
flickering deep within
the complex human neural coils
does it, too. When it sees you.
trigger the impulse: destroy?
or does it pulse blankly at the
monster digression
from work work follow
the food-path cringe
at pain, scurry at high speed
when the shadow of a human
limb approaches.