No Insect

He spread poison in the yard:

snailbait and tanglefoot.

Sometimes he made me taste the pellets.

I liked to watch ants stick themselves

to gluey rings around the trunks of apple trees.

But this poem trails away from saying what it needs to say.

Near the tomato plants, he had arranged saucers

filled with beer: a family recipe for drowning slugs.

He dared me on a Saturday to eat one,

drooping dead across a china pattern,

and when I refused, he held the fat gray carcass

like a precious heirloom, candied gem,

and dropped it in his mouth.

“You just pretend that it’s a truffle,”

the dead slug flopped across his tongue,

“or something you like: taffy, licorice, a gummy worm.”

This is false allegory.

There was no slug. No garden and no dare.

This poem should be set inside the bathroom

or the darkened family-room,

behind windows with drawn shades.

This poem is about the blackest magic:

make-believe.

It knows how tongues can somersault coercive flips.

It knows how deception tastes.

He swallowed hard

and put his fingers in my hair:

“It’s like that with anything you put inside your mouth.”

I smelled the poison on his breath.

I felt the coldness of the tile floor on my bare knees

and heard the fly —there is no insect

in this scene, but the placement of a hiss —unzipping.