Saturday, February 10, 2018

Ali Jane Smith - The Mantid on Crown Street

after reading Magdalena Ball #5 Kindly Note in response to Andrew Burke’s #2 Dear Beneficiary 


i think the mantid was already in trouble
and my attempts to help didn’t make things very much worse

I’d already had a few encounters with spiders
real and bourgeois that weekend

cockroaches i’ve dealt with elsewhere
but the mantid, dead by now you’d think

is stickier, my feeling for it not the fondness
i have for ladybirds or ants of a certain size

but tiny hooks of obligation, maybe its the face
like a Hollywood alien

it’s deflating to fail in an attempt at rescue
I was looking forward to carrying it

carefully, on the matt side of a postcard
toward that tree i always think i’ll photograph


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