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COCKROACHES, 11/9/19
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COCKROACHES, 11/9/19
Scott Stone
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“Cockroaches, 11/9/19”
Grime shiny and skittering across dusty floors,
Skulking clumsily in forgotten corners,
Spindly limbs pathetically scraping snow-white baseboards.
Lazy trundling is the cockroaches’ gait,
Drunk on filth, woozy on refuse.
Bastions of prehistoric epochs.
Still, they are tenacious
And require comically colorful circus tents in
Sweat-drenched Florida for temporary decimation.
The click clackity-legged invasion fuels nightmares,
An evolutionary revulsion to decay,
Not just some quaint Cleaver-esque obsession with
The ornate presentation of pristine cleanliness.
Bottle-blonde soccer moms embrace a secret
Howard Hughes-ian pathologic fear of
The infected mucus-like mustard pus
Seeping out of cracked, creamy innards, curdling and sullying
Resplendent granite countertops
Or the soles of Italian loafers.
Even the German naming of such horror
Urges ancient elemental imagery,
The guttural ungeheures Ungeziefer^ and
Poor Gregor Samsa,
A rotting apple lodged in his aching back,
The true marksmanship of a furious father.
Remember the Apricot Autocrat* likening humans to vermin?
And the fascistic demonization of entire races?
Government sanctioned pogroms
Nights of shattering glass
Technological progress
Systematic efficiency
Atomic advancement.
Perhaps it is mankind with its mammalian arrogance and
Bipedal self-righteousness that
Disgusts the cockroaches.
Theirs is the long game,
Waiting for the inevitable moment when
They can move freely upon an inherited earth,
Safe from stomping feet or
The calculated attack of a
Shoulder-slung spray can.
^monstrous vermin
*courtesy of author Michael Harriot