West Nile Queen
The female, hungry for blood,
frets on the neck of a Rhode Island Red,
searching through combs for the right place
to suck.
Later, humming her casual dirge,
she lights on the tanned bicep
of a construction worker bending to his drill,
punching the sidewalk, shattering cement.
Absently he slaps his arm
where the biter has left her mark
on the inky outline of an anchor, cross and heart,
pushes his hardhat backwards
and wipes his face in a single gesture
under the noonday sun.
She delivers her kiss of death
with no warning. No trumpets
herald the battle ahead
on a field of white sheets
that cannot cool a fevered brain.
No fanfared entrance into heaven
for a man who for thirty years
so loved the judder of a jackhammer
that he failed to notice the light
whisper of her body as she entered him,
tracing the heart-shaped indigo
of "mother."
Page(s) 33
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