Solitary stars, speckled across an iridescent thorax. It was easy to suppress 
a squeamish phobia. She became a member of the family, unofficial
friend, natural dinner guest. Tonight we are dining on

beef, potatoes, bees & houseflies. Her children gestate
in our windowsill, pearls of eggs spun into her symmetrical web.

By mid-June her babies deliver; they disappear into a summer breeze
on twines of infantile web. Like mother like spawn, they are transient
and seasonal. Their mother dies after, a waning body withstanding elements.

My father and I watched her quiet afternoon passing. A wounded arachnid,
her last meal decaying in her stomach: the five-inch wasp that killed her.
                        

	—Because of Kirsten Rae Simonsen’s Sun Machine (2017)

My girl is slowly extending and her fur is 
turning white—maybe I adopted a sheep? 

Maybe I’m becoming a haggard witch
with dark circles, messy hair. Ten hours:

that’s how much sleep I’ve gotten. 
Ten hours in five days. Light snooze, then

a puppy’s cry; she cries for her mother
and her siblings, still young enough 

to remember a pile of sleeping bodies.  
She lets the neighbor’s dog pick her up 

by her scruff, carry her to a pet bed, lick
her poodle fur. My back has started aching

when I lay by her covered crate, 5am,
trying to forget my girl has torn my flower beds

into shreds, I try to invoke my father’s patience;
I read her pages of Ovid, wondrous poetry

riddled with mythological rules, seeing
her legs lengthen and her cries quiet.

I believe one day she’ll sleep on my bed
with her wooly, white fur, gentle eyes

imbued with awesome powers, my girl
will blast a hand drawn rainbow into the sky.