by Chris Buchanan
Poetry, 2012

—

I saw a spider spiding
and you know it saw me too.
You’re not supposed to see them spide.
They always know when you do.

You’ve seen them spinning thinning
wettened strands of flattened flax
and standing, guarding statue-still
like soldiers by their cracks,

those black cracks in your paint-peeling ceiling,
the ones that used to be yours
until the spiders came and stayed
and spided and left you the doors.

You know what spiding is to spiders
and you know you’d never admit it.
We all pretend they’re just trappers and catchers and
crawlers and creepers and nothing else in it

but they’re spiders. Voracious with it, traitorous,
pernicious and vicious inhuman little
blighters with their spiding, biding their time,
day and night as they wait, saving their spittle,

saving their flies, slavering hideous bile on their smiles,
disguising the spindle sharpened taloned legs they’re hiding
behind their manifold red eyes and fangs and other rattling swords,
there just to dampen the sickening silence of spiding.

If you see a spider spiding,
they’ll always see you too.
You know they like their spiding secret.
You won’t know what to do.