Locusts, and: Ficus
- Locusts, and: Ficus
Locusts
when the wolves that live in your lungseat the sheep that live in your lungswhen you envelop someone you lovelike a plague of locustswhen every face at the movie theateris carved from wood and alsoon fire and someone tells you about the neo-Nazi rallya block from his sister’s bat mitzvahand you donate to build a housethat is never builtin a country that’s probably sick of your interventionsand the telemarketer says you’ve won a cruiseso you dictate your credit card and all the neighborhoodpigeons carry knives in their beaksrifles nitrates acid rain the palm trees whisperwho replaced all the grasswith Venus flytrapsthe skull on your nightstand is yours but not yoursbut yours [End Page 29]
Ficus
I split three pills with my ficus and nowit’s being weird. It won’t drink my breath or eatthe sun or fight offthe spider and his wife, whom I alsosplit three pills with,because it’s Christmas, becauseI was sad driving pastthe shuttered stationery shop and the womandragging her kid on a leash.I split three pills with the womanand three pills with the kid. I measured my heart rateand pronounced myself legally dead. My ficusgave me three pills. I felt better. I tolda bath towel, and my friend’s bulldog,and the dregs at the bottomof my tea. I told the three pills in my pocketand the three pillsin my bed. Each onea loose pearlready to string togetherin my belly, in the bellies of people I lovedor thought of when I watched a pigeondisappear inside a hawk. [End Page 30]
Ruth Madievsky is the author of a poetry collection, Emergency Brake (Tavern Books, 2016). Her poetry and fiction appear in Tin House, American Poetry Review, Iowa Review, Rumpus, ZYZZYVA, and elsewhere. She is at work on a second poetry collection and a book of linked short stories. When she is not writing, she works as a clinical pharmacist in Los Angeles.
