Where Humans Live Roaches

The world is my dustpan, but I am not a cleaner.

The apartment gathers its ghost in dust. If I stay too long

in bed, I rise up through my own desiccated shell.

Cities are made for maggots, pale white and promising

a better life above the trashy streets. Or the city

is a huckster’s overcoat, all of us in individual pockets.

Under all this surface, the roaches live. They are clean

and they are cleaning up after us, their mandibles precise,

delicate. The roaches have individual names.

When the day comes, when drifts of dust tide in

to obscure our faces and our libraries, when that soft blanket

roughs out all our edges, the roaches, too, will leave.

For now, I watch their pilgrimage at night, faithfully

touching antennae to the fridge, the oven, the toilet.

When these crisp angels take wing, I swat them from the air.