Transubstantiation Poem by Janaka Stucky

Sometimes I think
I could build an ant.
I mean, how hard could it be?

I would gather my materials
from flea markets
and musty hardware stores.

Toothpicks & tweezers
would be involved
maybe even the exact scraping
power of a pinpoint

(to grind the fine edges of course)
to attach the thorax,
serrate the mandibles.

Its antennae would be the hardest part—
needing to pluck out
my own eyelashes to prop them up
while the epoxy dries.

Then onto cockroaches:
(after having built a worker,
drone, carpenter and queen)

their shells a fantastic project
for my Sunday afternoon:
buffing & polishing my torn-out
thumbnails into gossamer perfection.

I could do a dragonfly then
or a locust
fashioned from the sinews in my tongue.

All summer an army of spiders
forming from the webbing in my iris,
centipedes from my lung.

Come September
there would be hundreds
lined meticulously along the shelves
around the chair where I
used to sit.

And when you returned
you could whisper life into them all
and they would crawl
all over you

into your ears
and nose

into your mouth.