Nadia Arioli

Grendel’s Mother Considers Ants

The way to carry is to care.
You would have taken the arm as well,
a hundred thousand of you.
You have to be strong to be small.
O ants, can you lift my prayer?

My Left Ear

A crustacean has taken up residence in my left ear. I am unsure of its species, as it is very small and never pokes its head out of its newfound shell. It has dozens of legs, and perhaps an expert could use them to identify it. The legs are long and spindly and quiver constantly. I know this because I see them when I shave in the morning.

At lunch, when Ms. Anderson was saying how she was afraid to have children because her mother had three stillborns and was that sort of thing hereditary and Mrs. Jones was telling something about her ex-husband, Ms. Anderson coughed pointedly behind her napkin. Mrs. Jones looked up from her menu and screeched at me. Embarrassed, I left without paying the bill or collecting my coat.

Evicting it would be a simple matter with tweezers and a mirror, but I find myself reluctant, despite having to take my meals at home. The crustacean would be undoubtedly helpless, and assuming it found a new habitat, suppose it was less hospitable? Besides, I would no longer have an excuse to decline invitations, and my hearing of divorce, inheritance disputes, and the weather would be unimpeded.

My right ear is quite unoccupied, thank God, because then it would all be over. If another crustacean should lodge itself, next snails would move into each nostril, and two bats would hang on either side of my uvula. I would be but a little ark in a flood of tears.

Nadia Arioli is the cofounder and editor in chief of Thimble Literary Magazine. Arioli’s poetry has been nominated for Best of the Net three times and for the Pushcart Prize and can be found in Cider Press Review, Rust + Moth, McNeese Review, Penn Review, Mom Egg, and elsewhere. Essays have been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize and can be found in Hunger Mountain, Heavy Feather Review, SOFTBLOW, and elsewhere. Artwork has appeared in Permafrost, Kissing Dynamite, Meat for Tea, Pithead Chapel, Rogue Agent, and Poetry Northwest. Arioli’s forthcoming collections are with Dancing Girl Press and Fernwood Press.