Old Roads, New Stories: A Literary Series
Because October is now an avalanche of Halloween stuff, and because love has never been a simple story:
Why We Have Spiders
Nobody wanted the spider,
and yet it appeared: a shock
in the corner, a whisper
on your arm
then a jumpback
revulsion.
It had come to teach us the secrets
of fishing, stringing nets
together over hours,
stringing hunger together
with patience, every thread,
all of them connected.
And it taught about love: arriving
or leaving,
going any one
of eight directions.
Like the spider,
it has four hands to reach out,
but also feet, just as many,
to walk away.
Rob Carney’s new book The Book of Sharks is available now from Black Lawrence Press. Previous books include 88 Maps, Story Problems, and Weather Report.Read poetry by Rob Carney appearing in Terrain.org: 6th Annual Contest Finalist, 4th Annual Contest Winner, and Issue 30. And listen to a new radio interview with Rob Carney, and here’s an older radio interview.
Header photo by Kit Leong, courtesy Shutterstock.
