This isn’t funny, the ant thinks as the foot comes down.
The snail sucks its belly in, but its shell is as straw to a wolf.
The stinkbug, the newborn cicada, spiderkind’s Magellan,
all sunk into a concrete grave, smeared into memory,
into stain. I’ve told this story before, how my brother broke
a grass snake’s jaw, how I fed ants to spiders and ant lions,
how I spit into my cat’s mouth as a child, just because I could.
And when I was younger, there was such joy in destruction,
unmaking so much more immediate a drug. Melt the plastic,
dent the metal, burn the wood. But insects don’t scream.
They don’t feel pain we can see. Their faceted, blank eyes
reflect every version of who I am. This isn’t funny, I think
for the ant, because ants don’t think. Neither do the bees
poisoned by pesticide to keep a cultivated lawn free from pests.
The bees stagger on the sidewalk, dying without knowing
they are dying. This is misery I can put them out of. But I don’t.
Andrew Kozma’s poems appear in Strange Horizons, The Deadlands, and Rogue Agent, while his fiction appears in Flash Fiction Online, ergot., and Phano. His first book of poems, City of Regret, won the Zone 3 First Book Award, and his second book, Orphanotrophia, was published in 2021 by Cobalt Press. You can find him on Bluesky at @andrewkozma.net and visit his website at www.andrewkozma.net.
