Mike Curran
Su Hwang
Invasive Species
Sleep, Bee, deep and easy.
Hive, heave, give, grieve.
Then rise when you’re ready
from your soul’s hard floor
to sweet work
or some war.
∞
Tracy K. Smith
We bug. Arachnid, aphid, louse, flea.
Hornet, maggot, mosquito, mite, tick,
gnat, creep. Vermin, pest, lice. Jewel
beetle, spongy moth, spotted lantern
fly, chestnut gall wasp, fire ant. Die?
︎
You bore. Brought here against your will to glitz
& glam emerald exoskeletal gore, borer, slayer
of ash groves. Green armors shimmer, shift & sour
like mood rings: peridot, malachite, peacock ore,
tourmaline, jade—as you gnaw on bark burrowing
deep to lay roe exponentially like every other beast.
Hatched. Daisy-chain of larvae tunnel serpentine
to feast: xylem, phloem, cambium, vascular meat,
as if every host is made to fade. Serrated antennae
zigzag tracts into galleries of rotary, beltline, gyre,
ambit, wreath, loop: a circuit network like zodiacs
that graffiti & tattoo most outer rims. Busy roadways
riddled with curlicues as you depart pupal rooms
through D-shaped holes like shit emoji grins. Spring.
Stiff elytra blades that buzz, whip—you disrupt
the flow of water & grub, from root to canopy of
leaves—beheading the muse. No more webs, shade.
︎
You sow. Kudzu vine, English ivy,
Japanese knotweed, Andean pampas
grass. Yellow star thistle, prickly
pear cactus, water hyacinth, laurel
wilt: weed, weed, weed, weed. We.
︎
Around a low bend, I cross the carcass of a tree splintered
at the base, shredded like string cheese, like tendon, striated
& dead. Her long, motley trunk & limbs splayed like an aging
damsel in distress from those black & white films that skip
& wane—all arms, high drama. Shock of barren branches,
desiccated husk. Soil. Perhaps spruce, elm, birch, or oak,
it’s really hard to know; no arborist, I can only name a few:
willow, pine, maple, cypress, palm. We are wired to skim
the surface of things, this fabric in which we live, whether
lamprey, scion, or lawyer—there’s so much we never get to
know. The nightly news reported severe gusts tore through
town taking this 100-year-old down. Bonsai, yucca, hemlock,
sequoia, beech: our material plane riddled with splendor &
pain. In my neck of the woods, creatures cargoed from places
close to where I was born, trafficked or unethically raised,
have sought escape in that primal urge to breed. Parallels
between body & leech, comrade or foe are unmistakably
brute. You are not wanted here. Cycles of harm run rampant
from forest floors to department stores, depending how high
you land on the food chain. For every seal, there is a shark.
︎
I creek. Bighead, purple sea urchin,
Asian carp & New Zealand mud snail,
zebra mussel, cane toad. Chinese mitten
crab, white spotted jellyfish, killer
shrimp, spiny flea. Colonial sea squirt!
︎
We come from all over. Some by foot, some by
air, some by roiling sea—riding currents smashed
into coops, glued to navels of vessels, or brought
as seeds. Expert dispersal agents propagate, prime,
proliferate. It’s genetic, you see, this need to be:
here, there, everywhere. Nature is cacophony,
yet human interference triggers grim calamities,
either by might or hobby, inadvertent or not. Take
for example, our insatiable hunger for ivory fueling
the extermination of savanna elephants; sperm whales,
walruses, warthogs, narwhals, hippopotami, also
at risk from manmade appetites for decorative crap.
Body parts as commodities. It began with the earliest
migrations: decimation of indigenous cultures in the
name of discovery & so-called progress, to the rise
of global trade & rabid consumption. Every common
denominator: invasion. Then, retaliation—unleashing
chemicals, viruses, or other animals to eradicate &
deflect devastations of our own making. How do we
curb noxious meridians of desire, this constant need
to feed beyond mere survival? At this alarming rate,
collapse of every biome & empire seems inevitable—
the numbing circulation of capital & mushrooming
notions of own exceptionalism. Aren’t we the only
species to capture prey, erect a cage, then call it zoo?
Lives as exhibition, entertainment; or cite different
stripes of race to justify hegemonic systems anew.
Impugning this & that being for expressing their basic
character when the onus of engineering a world full
of extinctions is mostly ours alone. Life cannot be
supported in a vacuum. Let us accede to Native lore
of the Three Sisters: squash, bean, corn—to map the
way toward synergetic communities as growth of one
is sustained by another, to not only endure—for all
flourishing is mutual. It’s no wonder, monoculture kills.
︎
They pet. Feral pig, wild boar, grey
squirrel, brown tree snake, nutria,
ferret. Burmese python, European
starling & rabbit. Jumping worms
& mute swans. Even domestic cats.
Hive, heave, give, grieve.
Then rise when you’re ready
from your soul’s hard floor
to sweet work
or some war.
∞
Tracy K. Smith
Chorus
We bug. Arachnid, aphid, louse, flea.
Hornet, maggot, mosquito, mite, tick,
gnat, creep. Vermin, pest, lice. Jewel
beetle, spongy moth, spotted lantern
fly, chestnut gall wasp, fire ant. Die?
︎
Act One
You bore. Brought here against your will to glitz
& glam emerald exoskeletal gore, borer, slayer
of ash groves. Green armors shimmer, shift & sour
like mood rings: peridot, malachite, peacock ore,
tourmaline, jade—as you gnaw on bark burrowing
deep to lay roe exponentially like every other beast.
Hatched. Daisy-chain of larvae tunnel serpentine
to feast: xylem, phloem, cambium, vascular meat,
as if every host is made to fade. Serrated antennae
zigzag tracts into galleries of rotary, beltline, gyre,
ambit, wreath, loop: a circuit network like zodiacs
that graffiti & tattoo most outer rims. Busy roadways
riddled with curlicues as you depart pupal rooms
through D-shaped holes like shit emoji grins. Spring.
Stiff elytra blades that buzz, whip—you disrupt
the flow of water & grub, from root to canopy of
leaves—beheading the muse. No more webs, shade.
︎
Chorus
You sow. Kudzu vine, English ivy,
Japanese knotweed, Andean pampas
grass. Yellow star thistle, prickly
pear cactus, water hyacinth, laurel
wilt: weed, weed, weed, weed. We.
︎
Act Two
Around a low bend, I cross the carcass of a tree splintered
at the base, shredded like string cheese, like tendon, striated
& dead. Her long, motley trunk & limbs splayed like an aging
damsel in distress from those black & white films that skip
& wane—all arms, high drama. Shock of barren branches,
desiccated husk. Soil. Perhaps spruce, elm, birch, or oak,
it’s really hard to know; no arborist, I can only name a few:
willow, pine, maple, cypress, palm. We are wired to skim
the surface of things, this fabric in which we live, whether
lamprey, scion, or lawyer—there’s so much we never get to
know. The nightly news reported severe gusts tore through
town taking this 100-year-old down. Bonsai, yucca, hemlock,
sequoia, beech: our material plane riddled with splendor &
pain. In my neck of the woods, creatures cargoed from places
close to where I was born, trafficked or unethically raised,
have sought escape in that primal urge to breed. Parallels
between body & leech, comrade or foe are unmistakably
brute. You are not wanted here. Cycles of harm run rampant
from forest floors to department stores, depending how high
you land on the food chain. For every seal, there is a shark.
︎
Chorus
I creek. Bighead, purple sea urchin,
Asian carp & New Zealand mud snail,
zebra mussel, cane toad. Chinese mitten
crab, white spotted jellyfish, killer
shrimp, spiny flea. Colonial sea squirt!
︎
Act Three
We come from all over. Some by foot, some by
air, some by roiling sea—riding currents smashed
into coops, glued to navels of vessels, or brought
as seeds. Expert dispersal agents propagate, prime,
proliferate. It’s genetic, you see, this need to be:
here, there, everywhere. Nature is cacophony,
yet human interference triggers grim calamities,
either by might or hobby, inadvertent or not. Take
for example, our insatiable hunger for ivory fueling
the extermination of savanna elephants; sperm whales,
walruses, warthogs, narwhals, hippopotami, also
at risk from manmade appetites for decorative crap.
Body parts as commodities. It began with the earliest
migrations: decimation of indigenous cultures in the
name of discovery & so-called progress, to the rise
of global trade & rabid consumption. Every common
denominator: invasion. Then, retaliation—unleashing
chemicals, viruses, or other animals to eradicate &
deflect devastations of our own making. How do we
curb noxious meridians of desire, this constant need
to feed beyond mere survival? At this alarming rate,
collapse of every biome & empire seems inevitable—
the numbing circulation of capital & mushrooming
notions of own exceptionalism. Aren’t we the only
species to capture prey, erect a cage, then call it zoo?
Lives as exhibition, entertainment; or cite different
stripes of race to justify hegemonic systems anew.
Impugning this & that being for expressing their basic
character when the onus of engineering a world full
of extinctions is mostly ours alone. Life cannot be
supported in a vacuum. Let us accede to Native lore
of the Three Sisters: squash, bean, corn—to map the
way toward synergetic communities as growth of one
is sustained by another, to not only endure—for all
flourishing is mutual. It’s no wonder, monoculture kills.
︎
Chorus
They pet. Feral pig, wild boar, grey
squirrel, brown tree snake, nutria,
ferret. Burmese python, European
starling & rabbit. Jumping worms
& mute swans. Even domestic cats.
Su Hwang is a poet, activist, stargazer, and the author of Bodega (Milkweed Editions)︎︎︎, which received the 2020 Minnesota Book Award in poetry and was named a finalist for the 2021 Kate Tufts Discovery Award. Born in Seoul, Korea, she was raised in New York then called the Bay Area home before transplanting to the Midwest. A recipient of the inaugural Jerome Hill Fellowship in Literature, she is a teaching artist with the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop and is the cofounder, with poet Sun Yung Shin, of Poetry Asylum.