Mostly now, I can't even kill what tries to hurt me

Abstract

Mostly now, I can't even kill what tries to hurt me Meghan E. Giles (bio) There's this spider whom I wantto write an elegy for, becauseI killed her, or not exactly—it waspremeditated, maybe. At the very least,I'm an accessory. I say shebecause she was a black widowwho was pregnant. Because she builta web inside a windowinside our greenhouse.Because when I showed herto my coworkers, they told me toget the spider spray and I did it.And the spray came downlike a shower does: you and all thatfog, waking up without knowingif you're still living in your body.Then when she wouldn't die,the men whom I worked with took offtheir boots, took turns poundingdown while I watched. And sometimearound then the babies spilled outand she stopped moving. I want to say somethingabout the way we hurt each other,but she hadn't hurt anyone. [End Page 129] What we were afraid of was a matterof could. That poison hung a littletoo long in our greenhouse.Past the point of comfortable, it lingeredon like bar smoke on bedsheets and a brightblue comforter, smoke in sheet clouds and a brightsky pillowing, a dazed coming-to then youwashing and washing and washing it. ________ And later, while clearingout the hoop house, I, gloveless, emptiedpots of soil and long-dead plants, so longdead they were unrecognizable,shriveled up like insides. I saw moreblack widows climbing all over that pot rubble. I want to say something also about howpoison enters and infects you,how it becomes a web inside with spiders spilling out,how that web becomes a window. But they hadn'tbit me. Wouldn't bite me. Not a single one. [End Page 130] Meghan E. Giles Meghan E. Giles received her PhD in English from Texas Tech University where she was a participant in the 2021 Land Arts of the American West fieldwork program through Texas Tech's College of Architecture. Her poems have appeared in Cimarron Review, South Dakota Review, Hayden's Ferry Review, Measure, and elsewhere. Copyright © 2022 University of Nebraska Press