<i><b>Wicked Alice Poetry Journal

Wicked Alice poetry journal

Spinneret
Ode to the Black Widow Spider

Amanda Auchter

You dance and court, finger
the yellow and red bands over
the back of a male, knot your legs

through his. He offers himself,
doesn’t stir under your observant eye.
The spills of your tricks stick and spin.

You hang belly up,
count the threads of an erratic web,
count the yellow eggs in their sacs.
The wings of a fly hum against the strings,

tear fragments in the fine silks of your trails.
You puncture their seams, suck them dry,
watch their bodies shrivel and curl.

Entrapment is beauty:
your red split hourglass swells.
You tiptoe through the blue hours,
recite the principles of stalking by moonlight.

Amanda Auchter currently works as the editor of Pebble Lake Review. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Antietam Review, Blue Unicorn, The Chaffin Journal, The Homestead Review, Mad Poets Review, Pennsylvania English, Plum Ruby Review, Willow Review, Writer's Digest Year's Best Writing 2003, and others. She is the recipient of the 2004 Howard Moss Poetry Prize and won third prize in the 2003 Writer's Digest Writing Competition for memoir/personal essay. At present, she is completing a degree in creative writing at the University of Houston.