SM Stubbs: Five Poems

Mice and Crow

Perched amongst the leaves, a crow watches mice build stores for winter. Unseen, it flatters the mice and praises their preparations. It tells them their god may not like what they’ve done. “Why wouldn’t they?” ask the mice. “We only gather what we need to survive.” The crow sympathizes. “I know,” it says, “but what if your god needs what you’ve taken? Do you not love your god?” The mice sift the earth, lift the juiciest worms over their heads. The crow laughs. “Your god does not eat worms! Your god eats mice.” The mice adjust their burdens. “What sort of a deity consumes its worshippers?” they ask. The crow says, “When it comes, you’d better make it happy,” and cackles as it flies away. A week later it lands before the mice, wings spread like a magician’s cloak. “I demand tribute!” it says. The mice pull a vine tied to a branch. A stone falls. The crow squawks and squawks. Its flesh turns blue, back too broken to lift its wings. The mice say, “We honor you as we honor our gods,” then leave it there to die.

Rambling Blues

I walk to the store, to the other store,

keep walking. Down near the water,

tourists and gulls. I watch the waves and boats

and wait for cars to sail off the bridge

into the bay. Resigned to what seems inevitable.

This is about probabilities. The way we

imagine a thing is the first step to it happening.

Those who sit in the dark gathering wisdom

can back me up: I wish nothing but love

for everyone in the world. Love makes

people better versions of themselves, love

reveals us through the world’s eyes.

Follow my genealogy back and I’m related

to the best humans. Go far enough

and I’m related to everyone. It’s my blood:

saints, painters, musicians, librarians,

preservers of sea turtles. I know I’m full

of devils, too, ones who’d like me dead,

who hate my politics and love of everything

tender, my defense of those not cut out

for cutting throats. I’ve had to harden

my heart since arriving, had to learn

the rhythm of minor, daily violence

and how to overlook it. This world

entertains many nightmares. Look,

there, floating beneath the surface:

thirteen dead cod, eyes wide as halos.

National Audubon’s Field Guide to Wetlands

I open my Field Guide to Wetlands when I want

music never taught. The names of flies,

for starters: Crane, Vinegar, Hessel’s Hairstreak.

Or mushrooms: Emetic Russula, Alder, Yellow Unicorn.

The specific designations we’ve given to nature

follow their own logic and I sing them for days: Kirby

Backswimmer, Eastern Dobsonfly, Large Whirligig,

Comstock’s Net-winged Midge, Poweshiek Skipperling,

Velvety Earth Tongue. I want to taste a velvety

earth tongue, tap it against my own. These

odd designations belong to a world that gives me

nightmares. Alien, cold, I feel them under my skin.

Doesn’t everyone, at some stage, fear being eaten alive

by bugs? Urban legends abound about beetles

and spiders crawling into bodies to lay eggs. Plus,

there’s that scene in Wrath of Khan, the Star Trek movie.

Twelve years old, in the theater with a friend

and his father, I felt a weight brush against my neck,

gripped the armrests like they would save my life.

Recently, next to a campfire in summer, a moth

flew into my ear canal up to the drum. It tried

to turn around and escape, fluttering wings

repeatedly. My head filled with its panic,

a white noise foretelling death. The doctors

at the ER laughed before flushing it out. I wondered

every night for months: what if it laid eggs?

What if the eggs slid into my brain, traveled down

to my lungs or the hollow ventricles of my heart?

This fear lives in me still: that the sudden hatching

of a thing with a name like a symphony

will be the birth that precipitates my demise.

The Body Responds

Darling, this is a frail frame you reside inside

and we’re tired of standing in our room

naked at 3 a.m. placing pins

at the site of key failures. How many times

have we preached about the agony

that follows temporary joy? Against our will

we carry you to the bakery and falter

under the call of your addiction.

How much is too much? The question

you’ve been asking since birth.

Think of us as a map. The creation of any map

involves shedding blood and often

results in death. It reveals

what you spent your life discovering. Never

forget the fields of sugarcane

you grew up near: deadly snakes slid between

the stalks, that sweetness protected

by nerve-wracking hisses.

If you are a ghost wearing us as a suit, we’d prefer

you strip us off and drape us

from a hook or over a chair. This way, we may continue

without the burden of these secular aches

we call affliction.

The Grim Reaper on a Bender

It’s at the door again, drunk again.

I shout through the screen,

“You’ve got the wrong house!

You can’t come in, go home,”

though where that is I have no idea.

Death garbles out phrases like,

“shattered shrapnel,” and, “not likely

to make it,” and I wonder if it wants

our neighbor, the one limping

around the yard while waving

at packs of summer-camp kids.

It’s after 2 am. From the bedroom

my wife asks who would knock

at this time of night? Death’s breath

reeks of fish heads and whiskey.

Streetlights shroud the world

with their light. I notice a coiled rope

hanging off Death’s belt which

is also a rope. I tell it people need

to sleep, that it should gargle water

so it doesn’t get a hangover. I slam

the door to ensure it gets the message.

Later that afternoon, an ambulance

parks silently in the neighbor’s drive.

They’re too late. On the porch,

we find a bottle of wine

next to a black bouquet of roses.