Julie Farstad, Gustavo, Matteo and Diamonds, 2017 (Artist Website)
Ink and watercolor on paper, 30 x 22 inches
The house is rotten. Lousy with bugs.
Yesterday springtails in the shower,
this morning a hum: in the bedroom window,
a wasps’ nest. I didn’t even notice until I overheard
someone next door stuffing our bin with other people’s trash.
The lid won’t close now, so when the garbage truck
finally brakes and squeaks down the street, I peek
out and then into the comb’s busy whirr.
Several dozen paper cells, little prisms packed with eggs.
I read in the newsfeed the only way we can save the planet
is to stop making more people. After that, we could stop
our travel, stop our tracks. I should be proud every
month when I see blood. Right after I lost my pregnancy,
I was told it was probably for the best because the baby
might not have come out right. A week or so back, we saw
a hornet’s nest the size of a turkey in a tree.
I thought it was an owl at first. When I was a kid,
my dad cut down a two foot tall swelling, dropped it
in a black pillowcase,
shellacked and hung the whole thing
in a glass box that the Kmart threw away. He took the display
up to the school for everybody to see. These days he reminds
me how good I got it, hurries me to have children before it’s too late.
The wasps in our window fashion their own paper from wood and spit-glue.
By autumn, they’ll all die mostly anyhow. In the spring, the few queens left
will begin again.