By Geraldine Connolly
The one who swings the black star
of its body across the pane,
the one who keeps hanging its
blindfold over the door, spinning
its small hand-lettered invitation.
When I brush it into the grass,
it vanishes. When I threaten it
with the broom’s thunder, it
scuttles into the shadows.
I check and recheck, but somehow
the spider returns, solitary
acrobat of the intricate.
Although I brush it and drench it,
though I pummel the doorframe,
the spider resurrects itself,
eight legs of doom skittering,
a zigzag of yellow
lightning in a sea of charcoal.
Even as I wait for sleep’s oblivion,
I watch for it, raising a hand against
the tangled cobweb in my dream.
Geraldine Connolly is the author of three poetry collections, Food for the Winter, Province of Fire, and Hand of the Wind. Her new book, Aileron, will be published by Terrapin Books in 2018. Her work has appeared in a variety of literary journals, including Poetry, Shenandoah, The Georgia Review, and The Gettysburg Review. She is the recipient of two NEA fellowships, a Maryland Arts Council fellowship, and a Cafritz Foundation grant. Her work has been broadcast on WPFW radio and featured on Garrison Keillor’s The Writers Almanac. She was executive editor of Poet Lore from 1994 to 2000 and has taught workshops for the Maryland Poetry-in-the-Schools Program and the Graduate Writing Program at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, DC. She now lives in Tucson, Arizona where she has taught writing workshops at the University of Arizona Poetry Center.
