Girl Under Bug Zapper
       

This haywire night, she's back from church
      with neighbors, plain-faced Pentecostal types
whose scowls cut through the windshield's smears
      when her door slammed, no thank you ma'am or wave,

who'd still be scowling, could they see
      she kowtows on rotten boards, the porch suffused
with purple-blues no regal soul
      would praise, to maim a wayward gypsy moth.

She likes to watch them die, the stunned
      and stunted, slugs betrayed by falling salt,
cicadas gutted, anthills razed
      like circus grounds after a hurricane,

and while a kinder child might stray
      from incantations, cataclysmic winds
of aerosol, or soda froth,
      her heart's a mudcake shrunken in the sun.

Besides, she's seen enough of them
      hooked onto eaves and storm doors, dull as leaves,
and knows they'll drop, spun from the shock
      of pain, or rapture, creatures slain in spirit.

Besides, she'd rather celebrate
      the world unhinged, its crooked scales and stakes,
party-of-one who plucks these wings,
      confetti in her folded palms. Frail things.

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Copyright © 2011 Caki Wilkinson All rights reserved
from Circles Where the Head Should Be
University of North Texas Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission