(PROSE POEM)
SCURRY SCARAB BEETLE POETS
JENI DE LA O
SCURRY SCARAB BEETLE POETS
JENI DE LA O
A scarab beetle poet scurrying over carcass and mostly eaten apples. Without a formal education, what more can be expected? No MFA, no mentorship. No shinny-fresh or up-and-coming. Yes, I am clawing and scratching and digging through the trash bins of people who have the sort of life I would have wanted for myself. Maybe I’ll luck out and some sleepy editor will accidentally click accept; can I covfefe my way into the kind of life that leads to bookstores? Maybe I’ll luck out and another Hialean will be on the fellowship board?—that happened once at a storytelling event, I said “Hialeah” and a solitary “woo!” shot across the room. I never saw who woo’ed; another scurrying scarab beetle from the place where all scurrying scarab beetle poets are made, climbing all over each other, devouring Cuban bread, hissing over airwaves. It happened in New York once, too. After a show this beautifully painted woman came to me and said she was, her people were, in her past she was a scarab scurry beetle. Maybe I’ll luck out, some one-quarter scurry beetle on their mother's side, two generations removed from the factories, sitting in an open office will see—if not talent, then a photograph memory of their parents' childhood as they imagined it, as it was told to them between coladas—and let me through, waive me in. My parents taught me not to believe in luck. Luck is a pagan God that got the Israelites stuck in the desert for 40 years, they said—and I being terrified of everything that is dusty (it makes my skin crawl), well, wandering the desert for 40 years seems like just about the worst thing that could happen to anyone. Far worse than the way Hialeah’s dirt isn’t dirt, but really dirty sand that always seems to have a bit of oil in it. I complain but really, when it rained, I loved the Lisa-Frank-swirling puddles that formed in all our potholes. Scurry, scurry, I pick clean the biographies of poets whose vowels and accents approximate mine, approach mine, sound mine. I replicate what they did and hope to get what they got*, but know my poems are just approximations, they approach art, they intend to approach art, they scurry into my cacharrito with directions to art, but the timing belt gives out and scurry scarab beetles don’t have roadside assistance. Still, maybe. Maybe covfefe, maybe recognition, maybe a mad meteoric momentary lapse in judgment will press my vowels and approximated accents into paperback spines. When I imagine this, the books are never new, they are cracked backs without chiropractors; warm in bed, dry with that baked paper smell that lets you know you’ve found something good. I really hope so, is what my hissing beetle-wings beat into your ear; but just in case, I scurry.
* (that is not my thought, but one an honestly great poet shared with the world last year; it is as functionally and deeply true as she is)
* (that is not my thought, but one an honestly great poet shared with the world last year; it is as functionally and deeply true as she is)
Author statement: I wrote this piece as a documentation of my process. It's autobiographical and probably a little more revealing than it should be.
Jeni De La O is a storyteller and poet who lives in Detroit. Her work has appeared in the York Literary Review, Oakland Journal, Five:2:One Literary Magazine, Rockvale Review, Rigorous Magazine and other places.