La Cucaracha, La Cucaracha
[La cucaracha] [la cucaracha] [ya no puede caminar] [porque no puede] [porque le falta] [la patita de atrás]
“… numerous studies going back more than a century have shown that immigrants—regardless of nationality or legal status—are less likely than the native population to commit violent crimes or to be incarcerated …”1
[La cucaracha] [la cucaracha] [ya no puede caminar] [porque no puede] [porque le falta] [la patita de atrás]
“Mexican immigrants participate in the labor force at a slightly higher rate than the overall immigrant and native-born populations …”2
[La cucaracha] [la cucaracha] [ya no puede caminar] [porque no puede] [porque le falta] [la patita de atrás]
“In 2013, median household income among Mexican immigrants was $36,700 …”3
[La cucaracha] [la cucaracha] [ya no puede caminar] [porque no puede] [porque le falta] [la patita de atrás]
[La cucaracha] [la cucaracha] [ya no puede caminar] [porque no puede] [porque le falta] [la patita de atrás]
[La cucaracha] [la cucaracha] [ya no puede caminar] [porque no puede] [porque le falta] [la patita de atrás]
“The team unearthed remains in trash bags, shopping bags, body bags or without a container at all, according to the Corpus Christi Caller Times. In all, 110 unidentified people were exhumed …”6
[La cucaracha] [la cucaracha] [ya no puede caminar] [porque no puede] [porque le falta] [la patita de atrás]
“Texas says there is “no evidence” of wrongdoing after mass graves filled with bodies of immigrants were found miles inland from the U.S.-Mexico border …”7
[La cucaracha] [la cucaracha] [ya no puede caminar] [porque no puede] [porque le falta] [la patita de atrás]
“The only good illegal immigrant is a dead immigrant!”8
[La cucaracha] [la cucaracha] [ya no puede caminar] [porque no puede] [porque le falta] [la patita de atrás]
The cockroach / the cockroach / can’t walk anymore / because it can’t / because it’s missing / its back leg
[La cucaracha] [la cucaracha] [ya no puede caminar] [porque no puede] [porque le falta] [la patita de atrás]
The cockroach / the cockroach / can’t walk anymore / because it can’t / because it’s missing / its back leg
—Vanessa Villareal
Notes
1Riley, Jason L. “The Mythical Connection Between Immigrants and Crime.” July 14, 2015. The Wall Street Journal Online.
Return to Reference.
2Zong, Jie and Jeanne Batalova. “Mexican Immigrants in the United States.” October 9, 2014. Migration Policy Institute.
Return to Reference.
3Zong, Jie and Jeanne Batalova. “Mexican Immigrants in the United States.” October 9, 2014. Migration Policy Institute.
Return to Reference.
4“How Does Race Affect the Gender Wage Gap?” American Association of University Women (AAUW). April 03, 2014.
Return to Reference.
5“How Does Race Affect the Gender Wage Gap?” American Association of University Women (AAUW). April 03, 2014.
Return to Reference.
6“Mass graves with bodies of unidentified immigrants discovered in south Texas cemetery.” Fox News.com. June 24, 2014.
Return to Reference.
7“Mass Graves of Immigrants Found in Texas, But State Says No Laws Were Broken.” Democracy Now! July 16, 2015.
Return to Reference.
8Comment by dsanb1. June 24, 2014. “Mass graves with bodies of unidentified immigrants discovered in south Texas cemetery.” Fox News.com. June 24, 2014.
Return to Reference.
The Work
one day it was segmented independently articulate hard as a chitinous wasp
the next a swarm governed only by hunger and wind and the unknowable
infinitesimal pressure of one winged being against the air against its neighbor
that causes the whole teeming cloud to turn each eye many-chambered
each wing many-layered beneath its covering shell each hunger one strain
in the collective gnaw we thought we were alone we thought it was a choice
—Rachel Brownson
Thou noisy insect, start thy drum;
Rise lamp-like bugs to light the train;
—George Moses Horton, from “On Summer”
I kill bugs, & it undermines my attempts at morality. I killed them even when I was vegetarian. I wanted to be nonviolent. I wanted and still want to be ethical. There are more insects than humans in the world—by weight, there is more insect than human. I want to not want to kill them. I want them out of my house—in 2005 I wanted them out of my apartment. I set out the drops of ant killer but I also smashed the ants with my shoes. I flushed them down the toilet. Then I catalogued them in my poem. For a while, I tried to put everything I killed into my poetry. I wanted to be honest. An insect poetics includes what is inconvenient, unknowable, & naggingly contrary to the vanity of the author. The bugs martyr’d on the grill of the car you took visionquesting down the coast. Something about a butterfly massacre of actual butterflies—because insects are actual and present.
—RM O’Brien
Bogey
What does it mean to get a bug? Is it a gift? It does arrive yet opens you at every pore & orifice, you regifted, open for bugginess for the bug by the bug by & by you have the bug are had by the bug. For example here, today, I am writing this writhing feverish with a bug, bug picked up that brought me low after I visited my father at the nursing home where he’s been without words now & then & then some more & then now unconscious from a bug, unwell, well, I got into his bed. I wept there where I kissed his forehead where I kissed his eyes & where his eyes they opened & not words only worlds somethings past surpassed between us. In the beginning, was the bug & in the end & in between bug bug bug, composite being, collective, they rejoiced how far they had travelled, their legacy across what distances, across what bodies their bitty biddings & where from here will they wield their wheel the wave, “Go teem!” It’s said language is a virus: it’s a bug & it’s sad consumer language a super bug & yet poetry an ancient probiotic…does it have to be refrigerated? Must it be kept cool?
& it was at that stage the bug found me,
I climbed into bed with my history,
and the bug was my just read words.
—Heidi Lynn-Staples
Appeal
I said yes but I felt this no in me
I heard a train and then I didn’t
it was gone
I was
yet to speak
I was waiting to talk
there, crying
and a voice said
are you ok
I said yes
but there was a buzzing
I am not
and explained the train and the hills behind it
subtle nature painting everlasting love
and the pouring rain
blurring the world
sometimes it is so clear
you ask
how many things are living in the fields
I am all alone here
I explained
how everyone is
and there was so much concern
crickets everywhere in Kansas City and
Northampton, Massachusetts
on the air
in the folds of travel
passing a flask
in the white noise of the river at night
I made this shape
with my hands
approximating the action
of a popping seed
a fern that folds
the kind of beauty you have to pretend not to see
or it vanishes
hold your hand out
move your feet
handed out when time got going
to be your way of moving
everything is equalizing in the fields
in the cellar
settling the blood
I’m not really here right now
though I remember it was nice
to walk with you
hmmm
it’s so quiet out here tonight
did I fail you in some way
I asked
—Seth Landman
- I discovered that insect poetics is an actual thing.
- There’s a magazine called Antennae devoted to insects.
- There are two issues of Antennae with the theme insect poetics.
- “Entirely Plausible Hybrids Of Humans And Insects” is the title of an article in Antennae.
- I immediately want to steal this title for a book.
- I find a poem inside “Entirely Plausible Hybrids Of Humans And Insects”
- The first four lines are:
A single human-insect hybrid emerged from deep
inside a red tulip. Three years later, the first swarm invaded.
Half mammal, half skeleton, they are barbarous
violent creatures.
- There are 47 book torrents about insects at kickass torrents. I download 6.
- 1 of the 6 is called Six Legged Soldiers: Using Insects As Weapons of War.
- Another is about insect origami.
- Don’t download the book about insect origami. The book has instructions on how to make many birds, but only instructions for 3 insects.
- Also, origami is very hard.
- There’s a movie about origami called Between the Folds. It has many insects in it, something I didn’t think about until I was asked to write about insect poetics quickly and in one sitting.
- 69 people have reviewed Six Legged Soldiers: Using Insects As Weapons of War at amazon.
- A Customer writes “Now this is good stuff right here. Sure, we’ve all heard about how the ancients used to launch jars filled with scorpions or how the Plains Indians would torture enemies by burying them up to their neck near a fire ant nest, but who would have thought that insects could be used as weapons in the modern era? This book takes a look at an odd, but surprisingly effective, history of insects and their military applications, both experimental and in practice, as well as some less than savory miscellanea.”
- I am intrigued by less than savory miscellanea.
- I find what I think is less than savory miscellanea on page 36.
- It involves the force-feeding of milk and honey, and wasp eggs being laid in one’s anus.
- I forward Mathias’ email to my partner who is also a poet and I think of how love has transformed us, but in a good way, not in the Kafka way.
- Vine Voice gives Six Legged Soldiers two stars because the author “created an entire new county in Indiana on page 147 (he mislabels Vigo County as Terre Haute County). I would have let it slide but he is so snide and so specific about where the plant was and how foolish it was to build it near a population center (Terre Haute).”
- IMHO Vine Voice is being a bit Bullet ant in his review.
- The last lines of the poem I found inside “Entirely Plausible Hybrids Of Humans And Insects” are:
intricate tree roots and insectile remains.
Wonder and anxiety in equal measure.
—Patty Paine
I want to scream THE POP CULTURE MADE ME DO IT as I set a school on fire. I’m sure I have seen something like that through one form of media or another. [insert pop culture reference] My interiority is swarmed by too many inputs that did not originate from me, as if there is such a thing as true-substance originating from pure-me. I made this poem. Or maybe the internet did. Did toxoplasma give me this depression, or is my depression a manifestation of my autonomous despair?
Are you a bot? Are you trying to hurt us? Is your poem about a threat of arson a threat?
I speak English like an insect with bird’s-eyes-like pattern on its body, pretending to be what it is afraid of. The way the mock-eyes don’t blink, the way I stutter are the give-away signs of our pretense.
The inverted eye of my cellphone camera in selfie-mode is watching me perform myself in front of its machine eye. Will I be able to find an appropriate hashtag for my selfie so it can belong somewhere on the web? Will the hive mind of internet accept me and make me whole?
WITNESS ME!
I want to be chrome, but the world isn’t a post-apocalyptic world, and Chrome merely collects my google search patterns somewhere, silently, and diligently, like ants building nests.
Why do I want my google search history to resemble that of the majority of Americans?
Do you realize internet hive mind is more coherent than my interiority?
Do you realize that my mock-eyes can’t blink?
There is a mild panic when I unlock my phone and my phone’s camera is on selfie mode.
I don’t trust its unblinking eye, always connected to the cloud.
Did you know that everyone on this webpage is a bot except you?
Did you know that your infested mind is unlike any others’?
Tell me, does my flawed output make me look like a bot?
—Ji yoon Lee
To Save Spider and Fly Alike
The conflicted world devised
the diligence of spider to try
the trust of the rest of us. Gentle
in her swaying self-expressed
trap spends carnivorous days in
summer filled with flesh
(gossamer days and
dangerous to the small).
Little lasts nothing lingers long—
if a life is measurable it is
dying. Then done. Some flies alight
on carrion, some on dung.
The lucky ones.
—Bin Ramke
The Humans Dance
Among themselves
Bees call themselves
Humans or anyway
The bee word meaning
humans which
It isn’t bees
and there’s a dance for it
Like how
they dance to tell
each other where
Flowers are
each bee performs
This dance the humans dance / Once only danc-
es it once only then
Immediately dies
I know where some really
good flowers are
they beg
—Shane McCrae