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?