Poetry by Madison Bigelow
Synanthropic (adj.): an undomesticated organism that lives in close
association with people, benefitting from their surroundings and activities
Myself I consume in small doses, teeming teaspoons
of Coca Cola or Saturday morning cartoons and when
indigo-hot nighttime static rolls into my bedroom,
the mattress cleaves as I soften into its valleys.
All knees and elbows, tomorrow I am a brown spider
in the corner of a sagging house with
sweating walls that meet ceiling, bedrock groans
as life settles.
The funnel weavers knit their webs in steady syncopation but I
am knotting my fingers, tangling my legs in an eight-strand braid.
My mother snores one room over while I quell
the ache to lurk under covers, press top of my head
against her belly. Let her hands knot my hair. Off the bedside
cliff my feet dangle instead.
