man v. nature | mareymercy.

Cockroach Poem

I am not afraid of obvious dangers; can appreciate
the snake, his contractions and curls, the calligraphic language
of his body in motion. Or the spider and her radial body,
her windowpane webs gathering gnats and beading the dew.
But you, what purpose do you serve besides ugliness,
lurking in lightless places, surviving my appointments
with the exterminator, my daily cleanings, my commitment not
to attract your kind. Last night I heard you whispering
through the air filter in my bedroom, the soft
and unmistakable grating of your wings like skin peeling,
like an unfolding letter of condolence, the black
almond of your head poking through a white slat,
just for a moment, then disappearing, continuing to scratch
inside the air shaft long after I went to bed.
In the morning I pulled the filter out of its frame,
found your crisp and iridescent body wedged into thick lint
and filter fibers. Radiation studies may negate
survival as what separates you and I, but it doesn’t matter.
I imagine you everywhere dark and unacceptable,
a raisin shell skittering over towels and spoons, like a haunt
across a grave, dragging your dark armor of indifference.

Debris Field

This is how we conquer
the mountain, bottle
by bottle, leaving a trail

of leftovers, transforming
our glory into another little shitpile,
a littered barometer of hubris.

Leaving even our bodies
behind, stiff as frozen dinners, foiled
by the basest of elements:

moisture in the air, a monsoon
wind, a thunder of shifting snow.

Maybe the Goddess will wake

and birth an avalanche
from her forehead, wipe away
our little cluster of culprits,

or perhaps the crevasse
will grind us with its icy
teeth, sift the bone-ash back

to a lower glacier – where a team
of Nepalese environmentalists
can collect it with the rest

of what the mountain rejected –

transparent water bottles, prayer
flags that never reached
the peak, the shreds

of winded tents, oxygen tanks
in jellybean colors collecting
on the mountainside

like confections on a theater floor
after midnight’s show.

I originally read the term “debris field” in relation to space waste – human junk orbiting the earth such as satellites and spent rocket stages. But when I tried to write a poem about it, this is what came out instead.