Shevaun Brannigan
Everyone is encouraged to be a boy
during a spotted lanternfly invasion.
Everyone kill. Everyone is encouraged
to be a girl during COVID-19.
Everyone hold a handkerchief to your mouth.
Don't kill the boy with the handkerchief.
Don't crush the girl beneath your foot.
The children make a game of it,
they call it social distancing,
they stand far apart from one another
in separate houses and stare at their screens,
covered in lanternflies drawn to the light.
Now the children are covered in lanternflies,
now the grown-up-girls are covered in children
covered in lanternflies, the grown-up-boys
are calling out to the referee, it isn't fair,
bad call, bad call. The lanternflies
say I love America, breeding on the trunks of its trees.
This is protected by their first amendment rights.
They elect a lanternfly to the local legislature.
To kill a lanternfly is to be a patriot.
To suspend their bodies in resin and sell pendants
of their exoskeletal corpses is to be a Small Business Owner.
To wade through thousands swarming
the Walnut Street Chipotle, crushing dozens
with each of one's steps, is to be
a hungry American. Teach
the children to kill them. Teach them
to identify instar 1 through 4,
count on fingers. Use the word smush,
say invasive species, when they ask
well what are we?
visit your ancestry.com as applicable,
express gratitude to the Lenape,
have you ever traversed a road?
Not all the little boys want to kill
the lanternflies, instead some want to run
to their grandfathers and hug them,
don't understand the mask
goes over the nose, the lanternflies
go under the shoe, the grandfathers have
preexisting conditions, the grandfathers have
killed lanternflies, the grandfathers have
fired guns many, many, many, many times.
The parents hold the boys back
six feet from their grandfathers,
who wave, crouched and crushing lanternflies,
shrapnel panging their legs.