Clade Song 14

Drag Coefficient

Ants are licking
and sucking their aphids,
they’re licking them
every which way,
licking and sucking,
their mandibles are hard
and serrated . . .

and the ants’ heads are bobbing
up and down as they suck the aphids
dry, but the aphids pour out more and the ants
go for it,
insatiable, wading through
the aphids’ juices, sliding
through the spurting . . .

and this goes on for hours,
until, smeared and bloated,
the ants fall over, and the aphids can
produce no more,
exhausted chattel
swollen with the glory
of stupefying
their ranchers.

Harrison Fisher was awarded a NEA fellowship in poetry in 1978. He has an MA from The Writing Seminars at The Johns Hopkins University, and he has published twelve collections of poems, most recently Poematics of the Hyperbloody Real. In 2024, he has new work appearing in BlazeVOX, Book XI, MIDLVLMAG, Misfitmagazine, Rundelania, and Transom.