Issue/Publication: City Beautiful Poems 1998-2006

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DIVA LATRODECTUS HESPERUS
The Black Widow spins into tangles
her complicated, criss-cross castle of a web
her shiny black one-inch body
distinguished by a red hourglass shaped insignia
glowing on her belly in the Arizona desert night
Waiting for beetles and cockroaches
instead she attracts a male Black Widow
half her size marked with red dots
along his back
who crawls into her silky nest
He begins to dance
his desire to mate
She falls for his display
Ten seconds later she pounces on him
snapping off one of his legs with the rush
As she gnaws
on this delicacy
he struggles to hobble away
on his remaining seven legs
but she jumps him again
She consumes him after
sucking his bodily fluids out
puncturing him
and injecting a toxin
fifteen times more deadly
than a prairie rattlesnake
She was his queen
and he the stud
who will never be able
to brag to his buddies
the next day