she tugs at the dry brown sheath,
encapsulating the fruits,
of monsteria deliciosa,
that jut like pale green penises,
with soft dimples,
and nature’s perfect tessellations.
What come forth are earwigs,
more earwigs than she believes possible;
a nest of creatures not thought to nest;
an unanticipated colony,
fulminating in a rough mass.
she has a particular horror
of earwigs:
the tweezers,
the speed of motion,
the unknowable intent.
they’re scary.
they might sit next to her
but she likes the colour …
the subsequent moments,
she spends in panic,
stamping out the panicking nest;
that splinters,
sends each member weaving,
in a dissimilar direction.
chips of brown exoskeleton litter the concrete,
with disenabled forceps.
“being exploratory and omnivorous, earwigs probably do crawl into the human ear”
This is not the first time,
recently,
that creeping things,
have changed their patterns …
always, cockroaches were a signifier of Sydney,
its vice, the filth it trails …
or else of Amsterdam, New York, Bangkok …
but now we have cockroaches of our own.
the native Australian kind.
white stripes along the side.
it is said they feed on decomposing wood,
so why have they been present,
beneath the couches and the stereos,
over this last half-decade?
and in the linen, the white-tailed spider,
in this last half-decade…?
then there are lemon-black caterpillars,
besieging the birch tree,
fat with yellow matter custard.
never have we seen so many cicadas.
never has she collected so many split brown shells,
clinging to bark and stems,
never so many damaged green individuals,
threshing in the dust.
trefoil of golden jewels set between black eye-points,
semi-consumed by bird or ant.
wings collected.
“cicadas have been eaten in Ancient Greece; the female is prized, as she is meatier.”
dire signs.
portents,
from the spirits of the inborn world.
plagues. plagues upon plagues.
the little black ants,
the little back flies,
population explosions in the terrene of the hexapod.
nature, with whom we do so little business,
now formicating on our doorstep.
you see, there is a difficulty,
with the recollection of climatic events.
the human memory is all too finite, all too skewed.
all too ready to believe,
it is the hottest,
it is the wettest,
it is the strangest season that any can recall.
but I have been hearing these things all my life.
what could be different now?
I think,
the insects.
