As always, this time of year, Nikki Giovanni’s “Allowables” comes to mind, and the indictment of the last five lines scrapes me raw,
I don’t think
I’m allowed
To kill something
Because I am
Frightened
As someone anxiety disordered who is also deeply arachnophobic, the spider thing is a yearly struggle, and the struggle is real. Yet, with the exception of the odd black widow found indoors, none of these wee beasts can hurt me. None of them threaten the contents of my pantry, my person, or my livelihood. And yet, every year I completely freak out and can’t even bring myself to put a jar near them to relocate them. Every year I say, “I will do better.”
Every year that’s all I can do.
if “all lives matter”
then murdering officers
never kill spiders
and black folks don’t make them flinch.
God, if reason trumped reflex…
Poetry Friday today is hosted by Irene Latham at Live Your Poem.
This poem got me in my gut. The spider, the black lives, trump… My god….
@Liz: I’m getting to the point where I hate the word ‘trump’ in adjectival or verb forms, but I refuse to stop using it, because in my world it means outshines, outclasses, upstages, eclipses, outdoes, surpasses, OVERCOMES… and we SHALL overcome…
I do my best, too. Rescued a little jumping spider off the screen of the smartboard last week as s/he wandered around our read aloud. But the scutigera’s (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scutigera_coleoptrata) that run across the bathroom or kitchen floor…not so much.
@MaryLee: Oh, COUSIN!!! Because I love you, I’m going to need to offer you sanctuary in MY house from those things. I have black widows, but at least they don’t have that many legs!!!!!!!!