Spotted Lanternflies

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.