The Thing With Feelers

Summer is sleepless. Cockroaches crawl over the walls, trail chipped yellow lead, invade castoff quilts, sweat sheets. You poisoned the ants that bled through the floorboards but somehow they march still. Wasps buzz at the window panes, they want your fruit, your rot, the peach of your cheeks. Something is humming deep in the ground. You no longer know what moves or stands still. Burnt fog passes over the sun, the moon, the lungs. Dread drifts in with the radio static, the steamed garbage smell from the streets. You went outside last Monday. Or something. Your thoughts sail towards the melting icebergs. There will be no air, you will have no children, but still you lay the traps, sort your sticky plastics, wash your laundry cold.

Sophie Panzer was born in New Jersey, earned her BA at McGill University, and currently writes and edits things from her home in Philadelphia. She is the author of the chapbooks Bone Church (dancing girl press 2020), Mothers of the Apocalypse (Ethel Press 2019) and Survive July (Red Bird Chapbooks 2019). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Lammergeier, Whale Road Review, Threadcount, Menacing Hedge, The Hellebore, and others.