My Own History of Plagues

The year of drought was followed by the year of locusts,
            the year of grass fires, the year daffodils
threaded with their cyanide seeds got all the goats.
            Then it was the seventeen-year cicadas.
Next, the year of two moons in the sky,       
            looking askance with their white eyes
like a rabbit shucked of its skin
            in one fluid motion. The year of my flea-bait boyfriend
with his flock of coonhounds baying up every tree
            in the valley followed the year
my father took a long swig from a can of Sterno
            and didn’t make it back up the basement steps.
The year Jennie got lockjaw turned stiff
            and gray as an old board. Cats got the kitchen mice
but a possum got the cats
            and some chickens too, and Bill shot the possum
but didn’t count on the kick, broke his collarbone
            like a hacksaw gone toothless. At the end
of twelve days ants had eaten the possum,
            and maggots, and fifteen kinds of fly,
and we all sat on the porch
            where the boards hadn’t rotted through
drinking gin out of jam jars as the sun sank
            behind grain elevators. Then grandma excused herself,
and Lolly who’d been the hired hand for about a hundred years
            left after her, and when I got up for the kitchen
I saw from the corner of my eye
            him brushing hair out of her face
and she had her hands on his waist,
            and I knew both would be gone by next year
and the well caved in besides.

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