“Under the Shadow” by Joanie Mackowski
by Ernie on 23/08/10 at 10:22 am
A silverfish on my pillow, dropping off into a box
of books, a fruit fly hovering, and sow bugs,
cousin to the barnacle: seven dead curled
beneath the tub (held to the light, they’re gold);
one live one, all perfect articulation and large
as a tooth, easing around the edge
of my foot. An orb weaver suspended between
the window and the screen, and twin
garden-variety spiders, frozen fireworks one inch
from the kitchen sponge, draped between the orange
and the salt. A soldier beetle guards the door,
shining elytra closed over
the wings neatly as the cover over piano
keys, as the gold leaf canopy
opens: the gypsy moth king wrapped in ermine
throbs the screen as if to say: Behold this inhuman
beauty: are you jealous? Yes, I am.
What a feat, to lay one’s head down
on the ground zero of consciousness, where
armor unfurls its chrysanthemum petals right
from the bones, where the mouth is a scissors, and claws
creep under the shadow of wings
with venation more splendid than any rose
window— and then one surrenders
even one’s ruthlessness, one’s exoskeletal,
perfect self-control,
as these three cicada carapaces
kneeling on the screen. Some cool air
drifts through the window; one
cloud suspends the evening. I’m reading when
a mosquito comes singing to the valley
of my ankle. I raise the book to kill it,
but miss, and the mosquito wobbles for
the ceiling, a bubble in a pool,
then vanishes. Yet I hear it droning,
lecturing about what to attend to,
what to forge, what to lose. I ignore it,
crouching down again to read, inert
and resilient tonight as platinum.
Outside a car passes, glides its headlight down my arm.
