Field Notes

.

  I: Insecta

  I snap: a sling-shot
  of sinew, tendons whipped
  to joints that buckle in lines as cleanly creased
  as an origami crane. Poised on a tripod of paper tips,
  I anticipate the wind but there is only steel
  shearing bone and then it all unfolds
  with a scritch-scratch and tickle
  of segmented limbs sprouting,
  barbed as berry-canes.

  II: Hymenoptera

  My skin
  once fed on your skin;
  sipped at honeyed pores
  with a thousand tiny, hollow tongues

  III: Apocrita

  and those words you said, the ones that closed
  like fists to cinch me mute but for this
  thin-bodied whine: please
  don't ever speak
  them again.

  IV: Formicidae

  They're predicting swarms
  this summer: better batten down the hatches,
  plug all holes; those little bodies can creep in
  through the smallest cracks. In the event
  of a breach, do not keep low and roll.
  Reach  for the vinegar: it will stop
  the fire from spreading.

  V: Myrmicinae

  I understand instinct,
  automaton motions dictated
  by chromosomes and pheromones,
  dances stepped to the chemical outlines of feet,
  the endless, mindless back-and-forth; but
  what I don't understand is how any of it
  came to be choreographed
  in the first place.

  VI: Solenopsis

  When this has been pegged out,
  bound wrist and ankle, and I have watched
  its skin shrink and all the meat from it stripped,
  I will gather up the knuckle and toe bones, cast them
  on the sand and study patterns
  in the way they lie.

  VII: Invicta

  My words, rival
  colony to your words: black flood
  and fire-storm in a single, tangled mass
  that consumes and consumes, until there is nothing.



.