The Bugs Get In Anyway
The Bugs Get In Anyway
By Linda Lerner
hot sticky days spent
squashing bugs that got in
thru half screens
some so tiny I never saw
what bit me
... ....................................
my computer caught them
thru the spam blocker
cousins I hadn't seen since childhood
retired early from 9-5 proletariat worlds
circle the globe in mobile homes
flying
after vice presidents of the American dream
their republican children became / some
bump up against my lead a different life
keeps me from becoming
the poor relation my mother was ...
blood lines link us from her two sisters and brother
petty quarrel jealousies split apart
cousin Allen's compliment flip flops:
"poetry doesn't sell," I tell him ...
"You were the lone free spirit of the family--"
his words evoke my Russian father's ghost
& this wayward daughter he said kaddish for
who Americanized the foreigner
that embarrassed me to kill the man
whose daughter I now boast of being:
I needed you then ... I don't need you now
Allen sends me a photo of himself
his father smiles right thru
daring me not to see him
..........................................
there's no full screens for
these old brownstone windows
whose two panes don't quite fit ...
I stuff the space between them with towels
to keep out the bugs
but they get in anyway ...
.............................................................
I explain the kaddish thing to cousin Mike
a retired engineer he gets it missing the point ...
"bad religious practice" he says
doesn't behave like that with his daughters
foreign beings are like ghosts he can't see
we talk of religion I blame
for most of the wars & violence over centuries;
"think of a knife," he says "how it can be
put to good use or bad like government or religion "
a bloody headless being looms up
doesn't let me see past it ...
"I feel I've been slowly getting to know you,"
he writes I do not respond
..............................................................
summer will soon be over windows shut
the bugs won't get in & these red marks
from their bites will vanish once again
Allen & I keep to politics the safe
war in Iraq we both oppose as
does his sister Marilyn
my third cousin who writes,
"my life also didn't follow a straight path,"
divorced with a son who died of aids
nobody comments on ...
my mother's voice, "not in our family"
reaches me thru her death like a warning
...............................................................
there are hundreds of dead bugs around the bulb
in the plexi glass fixture I remove to clean ...
was it false warmth or curiosity
chance that drew them here?