Susan Maurer

 

Anabiosis

Flies, little satanic vehicles,
   arose in my winter room
   like CO2 scentless, steals your sleep.
They brush me like perverts.
ZZroom, they go, small examples
      of the banality of evil.
I wait for them to starve
Do they eat plants?
Instead they go from two to three
   and seem to seek my company.
I consider it but they have dirty feet.
Bzzip, they go. They’re quite immune to death.
I think I’ve got them but they just fly away.
On fly paper, two fly paper, three flypaper, four.
Shivering, ecstatically exhausted,
   they struggle to be free.
And they give me their death, the only one they had.

 

Candle: End Game

You want me to attend you
while your wingéd chariot
hits its smash finale.
Neigh, neigh, not I, pony boy.
You help me see
the asp sting of solitude
in a dry bite while your dick
would pump venom, bad snake.

O the world is too much full
of self-immolators who
burn themselves at both ends.
But o my friends and o my foes
it’s not a lovely light.