John Rybicki

[from John Rybicki's We Bed Down into Water, 2008]

Yellow-Haired Girl with Spider

Once a spider lived under her arm and
so she never shaved. She let her hair
grow gnarl for that spider to nest in.
She'd slipper step the wet grass night
with her wet grass feet and hold a bare
lightbulb up under her hairy arm
with the hairy spider living inside it.
She'd keep that one arm raised until
fat moths and June bugs and beetles
and swarms of mosquitoes tangled in her
armpit, trembling and pinned down,
exhausting themselves until the spider
slipped from warm cave top
to sting those moths and beetle
bugs and June bugs and mosquitoes,
sting them over and over with that
one kiss I could not live without.

We Bed Down into Water: Poems (Triquarterly Books)

Scott M. Silsbe interviews John Rybicki on nidus.