Eight: answer (poem)
answer
the fleas die and the seedling trees die
ants that mob your cabinets and the crawling
earth’s answer to your time of living, wait
to shock you in a flare of lit escape
on bathroom floors at night
Of vegetation again, ivies and vines
ugly flowering things in beds made for inconstant returns
Of vermin again, who roll under your wheels die
and you have slaughtered by mistaken pouring
bleach and turpentine to inch the basement drain
and warning: contains lye inch to the cracks of city pipes
somewhere breached something of your household choosing
marks your arbitration
then become human
vermin, on thin representation repine in indignation
they would rather not the answer be
a quarantine or barricade or a plowing into molehills
their bellyaching is a plea
“Father, yell me where to go.”
under the tunnel sits no foundation
water carries sand, and carries it away
feet, that if touched hands, would start and rout
mill, in air, while a mill turns in the endless head
No one is having this argument
because the ants, hants, humants, whatever bargain struck
narrate on loop by rote behind façades
don religions and others’ skins
won’t have their song of crisis stilled
answer
The Public Waits for a Hint
thesis
(2020, Stephanie Foster)