that spy from the Great War
who never let her face be seen
except by candlelight kept
a green blister beetle in a tank
under the cellar steps
she nurtured the insect for years
with toothed aloe leaves and fed
on its erotic essence to lure
her lovers to their doom
a beetle and a woman became
mutual parasites over time
and lost every memory of
what they once had been
the huge green thing we found
rotting on the parlor carpet
was soon swept into a bin
only later did we come upon
a woman half a finger’s length
in that tank below stairs
August 22, 2008
by Eric Basso
Reprinted with permission of the author from Bestiary: Poems 2008 by Eric Basso (Obscure Publications, 2009). http://library.indstate.ed
Eric Basso was born in Baltimore in 1947. His work has appeared in the Chicago Review, Central Park, Collages & Bricolages, Fiction International, Exquisite Corpse, and many other publications. His most recent books are Decompositions: Essays on Art & Literature 1973-1989 and Revagations: A Book of Dreams 1966-1974 (Asylum Arts Press). Six Gallery Press published Earthworks, his seventh collection of poems, last year.