Art work by Aidan Lee Smith
(Click the audio below to hear Miriam read her poem)
Teenage Girls Read Bukowski
This one ant, same one, I am positive,
Runs up and down my bad arm,
In circles,
In summertime,
And I’ll have to kill it sooner
Or the quick ones and the dead tickle
My feelers—I admit freely, I don’t
Know how it all works.
I admit to you that I think you’re full of euphemisms.
What a wrong-sided business we style,
Is a for instance.
There are old men
Waiting to be fed by the young,
Waiting to be doped up
Or duped sideways.
However they can get it.
Ants traveling and staying put,
In numbers vast,
Warmth to warmth,
Poor,
Damnable things
That keep returning,
To itch and to expire.
And wouldn’t you know it
More so now.
It’s usually always that same one you see.
Written by Miriam McEwen
Art work by Aidan Lee Smith – The man has talent! Check out his website at www.aidanleesmith.com, Facebook and Instagram!
Read other writings by Miriam:
Broke Down Morning – A Short Story
The Young Women’s Guide to Making Bad Matters Worse
Miriam, I admit I read little of him in college, mainly because he was too depressing. Was your poem a satire of his writing style? If you have an itch and can’t scratch , how do you deal with it? Can you write anything about Bob Childs? I know he was like a grand pop to you. Loved him dearly. Need to send my sister a card, but, alas, I haven’t yet…
Ants come into my house. This is not very extraordinary. Big black ants that you think, “Jesus if these are the scouts, what do the soldiers look like?” (But do they really have big soldier ants somewhere or is that a myth?) I’ve trained my kids not to kill them, but to talk to them in cute voices, “C’mere ant, c’mere!” when the bug’s pinned down in a corner, and scope them up in cups I keep out for this purpose. I’m a jainist when it comes to insects you know, especially spiders. (And except mosquitos and ticks, of course. They can all die). I think my philosophy would be forced to shift were one to make a routine of walking upon me, like Moses always scurrying up and down my holy ground. Must have gotten annoying to God, like “man stop bugging me. take your commandments and get back into the desert.” Anyway, this poem has the itchiness and unpredictability of that ant. It “captures” the ant nicely, which I think I can say because my kids and I are all about capturing ants nicely. Or at least what I think I’m hearing in “What a wrong-sided business we style, / Is a for instance.” and the downright Elizabethan inversion of “In numbers vast,” is the unpredictable-stalking-itching feel. Also, the word “expire.” It reminds me of how Hugh Kenner thought he was putting a finger on “stream of consciousness” in assigning massive significance to Joyce having of his characters “retire” to the bathroom.
You know, I never know what to make of your poems. I’ve read far more poetry than you have (not trying to be a douche, just a fact of being a 39 year old bookworm) but I’m sure you understand it better than I do. At least that’s what I think when I read “Poor, / Damnable things / That keep returning, / To itch and to expire.” which (I think and I hope) is actually staying with the ant and not grandstanding with some metaphor of bleak human life. And then there’s that sneaky “you” that usually comes more straightforwardly in your writing. Here “you” is practically hiding, like its serving as the source of a metaphor, or “euphemism” of the poem, as if it’s declining to name something nastier by politely referring to the torturous return of the ant, as if that isn’t enough.
I will start to take this poem’s advice and address our ant visitor as always the one and the same. I will not, however, start reading Bukowski.