The Cockroach

Jean Hackett

September 8, 2024

You would stomp us down, stamp us out,

Watch as the red ones, the blacks, 

Americanskis and Germans

scurry into cracks and crevices,

through steam pipes and sewers,

across the synaptic snarls 

of your monkey brains.

Though we don’t drink your blood,

we strip clean the desiccated flesh 

of your soiled, sordid remains.

Though we do not sow, 

we reap the bounty of all 

your civilizations scramble to create.

We are life without beauty, pure survival,

a pathogenic threat to your belief 

in nature’s preordained, noble purposes.

We are the archetype of your disgust,

unsavory, unsanitary, monstrous vermin,

eternally destined to remain hidden 

in the tattered edges 

of your collective consciousness.

We have been with you always,

erratically embroidered by ancient Egyptians

onto spells woven to expel us forever

and cursed by Pliny.

But we shall never be banished,

not by poisoned words nor nuclear radiation.

We shall endure 

forever.

Jean Hackett lives and writes in San Antonio and the Texas Hill Country. Her most recent work has appeared in journals Ocotillo Review, Windward Review, and Voices de la Luna, anthologies Poured Out from the Big Dipper, Purifying Wind, and Yellow Flag. Jean’s chapbook Masked/Unmuted was published in March, 2022.