The children always ask for names.

[nonnymonster]

This sprung unbidden from my head at 3am after a long night of club dancing and now I can't stop staring at it. So I guess I'll give you guys the dubious privilege of seeing something I haven't picked to death. Maybe someone here can make heads or tails of it. I kind of like it but it's... foreign to me.

The children always ask for names.
The tarantula is Rosie.
The scorpion is young, writhing, piss and vinegar.
I will name her Li (a good cornfed Chinese Minnesota Swede name).
If I name her, maybe I will love her, and cradle her in my hand without flinching.
She will scuttle my questions to my mother
Who sits smoking on a porch
My cellphone can't reach.
She will offer my scorpion coffee.
She will say it looks like someone cares about it a lot
As she said to the spiky hairdyed strays that she found on her couch some Saturday mornings.
She once raised a scorpion
That her uncle brought home (thinking she would like it)
(I never met her uncle, but apparently
He worked at the sort of place that would have an extra scorpion lying around
And he was the sort of man
Who would sum up a little girl and declare her lacking in scorpions.)
For all my mother's flatchested Boys Life bravado
She could not love a scorpion.
Though as an older woman, her heart would interrupt nature,
Chasing parasitoid wasps from their paralyzed spider prey
And in turn cutting insects from webs with nail scissors.
But my little mother with her boy's bicycle
Fed the scorpion with recipes from her hated Home Ec cards,
Took care of her,
Let her curl her tail and stalk,
Let her come home smelling of things that happen on streets,
Until she ran away to Japan
And still answered when she called to ask how to get stains out of things.
Li will find my mother in the netherworld, and maybe they will be friends.
The children can name the walkingsticks, hissers, beetles.
I can't tell them apart, and
They don't live long enough for it to matter.

[Violet]

This sprung unbidden from my head at 3am after a long night of club dancing and now I can't stop staring at it. So I guess I'll give you guys the dubious privilege of seeing something I haven't picked to death. Maybe someone here can make heads or tails of it. I kind of like it but it's... foreign to me.

The children always ask for names.
The tarantula is Rosie.
The scorpion is young, writhing, piss and vinegar.
I will name her Li (a good cornfed Chinese Minnesota Swede name).
If I name her, maybe I will love her, and cradle her in my hand without flinching.
She will scuttle my questions to my mother
Who sits smoking on a porch
My cellphone can't reach.
The scorpion will not faze my mother
The way the spiky hairdyed strays I let sleep on the couch once fazed my father.
She will offer my scorpion coffee.
She once raised a scorpion
That her uncle brought home (thinking she would like it)
(I never met her uncle, but apparently
He worked at the sort of place that would have an extra scorpion lying around
And he was the sort of man
Who would sum up a little girl and declare her lacking in scorpions.)
For all my mother's flatchested Boys Life bravado
She could not love a scorpion.
Though as an older woman, her heart would interrupt nature,
Chasing parasitoid wasps from their paralyzed spider prey
And in turn cutting insects from webs with nail scissors.
But my little mother with her boy's bicycle
Took Home Ec because she had to
Fed the scorpion because she had to
Took care of her
Let her curl her tail and stalk
Let her come home stoned
Until she ran away to Japan
And still answered when she called to ask how to get stains out of things.
I will name the scorpion Li so she can find my mother in the netherworld.
The children can name the walkingsticks, hissers, beetles.
They don't live long enough for it to matter.

.. okay.. I don't know if I'm reading this correctly, but upon second read I had the impression that you.. ["you," as in the "I" of the poem, which I'll refer to as "you," since maybe it hits home more if I do].. anyway, I had the impression that you are in some way the scorpion from the past, though you maybe now have a scorpion you will name Li in honor of that scorpion so remembered. I don't know what it means to you that your mother was so boyish seeming [other than she should have been able to handle scorpions, in that case] but that's coming through too.. oh, then her change of heart, as it were.. even though she still couldn't love scorpions.. (i.e., you).

.. it seems to be about all this unresolved business we still have with our parents even after they die. Li.. sounds like "lie?".. no?.. don't know if that factors in.. though "writhing, piss and vinegar" sounds anything but a lie.

.. I guess the elephant in the room is that you are talking about love for a scorpion [which has that poisonous stinger, too, we might remember], which, objectively speaking, could be said to be fairly "unloveable." I mean, we're not talking about a cuddly puppy or anything here. And so there's this issue of being unloveable either because one IS unloveable.. or because one is unfairly unloved, which makes one FEEL unloveable.

.. now, when a mother cannot love a child.. well.. that gets rather complicated. Can one even blame a mother if that's really and truly how she feels?.. Maybe the "lie" is that the mother here loved the child, when the child KNEW she did not. Maybe that's the lie.. I'm not sure the poem tells us the degree to which she made her feelings known--directly, I mean. But, either way, the child finds out, and now feels like this unloveable scorpion, who, again, is not sure whether she's unloved because she's unloveable, or unloved unfairly, making her FEEL unloveable. Either way it sucks.. though.. better to feel one isn't entirely unloveable, even if you got dealt a pretty bad hand..

.. okay.. those are my unedited ramblings.. in honor of your unedited poem here. It was fun to read, in any case. It's not transparent, that's for sure.. and it creates a wonderful sense of personal history.. the mother smoking on the porch.. [where maybe the only thing that caught her attention WERE the scorpions.. which is why in your mind you made yourself one].. oh, and the uncle.. [who seems something of a character].. and his place of work, where there's an extra scorpion lying around.. well.. I guess down South, maybe.. where one bought supplies, before there were malls 'n things.. oh, and the spike-haired boyfriends that slept on the couch. Punk, I imagine, if they dyed their hair [presumably black]..

.. nice details.. like a novelist's details..

v.