tarantula hawk
by Anuel Rodriguez
The stinging heat on the trail feels bearable
now that I’m not dividing under my skin
into dead & white—animal & black--
bone & sleep. I pass a man wearing a
blue flannel outfit & it’s like he just stepped
out of his own blue period painting. He makes
me think of an old photo my parents keep
of me as a young boy walking through the
snow, in a snow park, that was taken on our way
to Tahoe. I’m wearing blue coveralls & a
blue beanie with white rabbits crowning around
my downward-looking head. It’s a time I don’t
remember at all. The man feels like a part of me
somehow. Or maybe it’s the other way around.
A hawk cuts over my head & dragonflies
appear in pairs like chromosomes threading light
into my bluedream body. I try not to stare up
at the sky because everything looks like TV static--
white noise overlaid over clean azure. And I
know this summer day will become a memory
overlaid over itself. My last depression now looks
like graffiti in the creek painted over in coats
of white, a cover-up of vines. In my childhood
memories, I’m often an observer. I try scraping my
first memory out of my distorted skull like clam meat,
when I’m visited by a tarantula hawk wasp that
glides over the dry, fire-ready grass like a black-suited
Tinker Bell with a blue velvet shine & orange
wings. I’ve never seen one like it before. I watch
its wings beating against the sun like glass,
wings rusted from the day’s first slaughter.
now that I’m not dividing under my skin
into dead & white—animal & black--
bone & sleep. I pass a man wearing a
blue flannel outfit & it’s like he just stepped
out of his own blue period painting. He makes
me think of an old photo my parents keep
of me as a young boy walking through the
snow, in a snow park, that was taken on our way
to Tahoe. I’m wearing blue coveralls & a
blue beanie with white rabbits crowning around
my downward-looking head. It’s a time I don’t
remember at all. The man feels like a part of me
somehow. Or maybe it’s the other way around.
A hawk cuts over my head & dragonflies
appear in pairs like chromosomes threading light
into my bluedream body. I try not to stare up
at the sky because everything looks like TV static--
white noise overlaid over clean azure. And I
know this summer day will become a memory
overlaid over itself. My last depression now looks
like graffiti in the creek painted over in coats
of white, a cover-up of vines. In my childhood
memories, I’m often an observer. I try scraping my
first memory out of my distorted skull like clam meat,
when I’m visited by a tarantula hawk wasp that
glides over the dry, fire-ready grass like a black-suited
Tinker Bell with a blue velvet shine & orange
wings. I’ve never seen one like it before. I watch
its wings beating against the sun like glass,
wings rusted from the day’s first slaughter.
Anuel Rodriguez is a Mexican-American poet living in the San Francisco Bay Area. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Glass: A Journal of Poetry, DREGINALD, decomP, The Acentos Review, and elsewhere.