Texts With The Pest Control Guy

 

Hey Jose! We have pests, Jose! If you could reply at your convenience we could rid ourselves of invasives, my guy! This is our home, you understand, and this task stands between us and the future US, you see, two people who could do anything, achieve mundane happiness, or rise to the standards our parents dreamed for us as children, if we could just exterminate the bad from our lives, the very small, very stubborn, very leggy badness from the corners of our lives, we should have cut the grass, WE KNOW! But we didn’t, and now we’re here, and the bugs are gaining power, Jose, they’re laughing at us everytime they fuck, we think, our future happiness is in your hands, my man, and if we don’t check off this task, WHO KNOWS! It will be there forever, a line on a list forever, and what then? What would become of us then? Two people, happily married, but, you know, the pests. Such a shame, they’ll say, that they could never cross out that thin black line, a spreading sickness, an orderly greed, that has been on the page all along.

 

 

 

Early Failed Pregnancy

 

Like a tick on the dog,

once it’s gone what’s left

is a red spot

and something about being more careful from now on.

It would help to mow the lawn,

it would help to stay fully covered,

how many consequences

are lurking in the weeds of our own backyard?

The dog scratches at where the thing grew,

a part of him for a short time,

but not no time.

My husband wants to know if I got all the legs.

Until we plucked it off,

the dog didn’t even know it was there.