Election Day

Palmetto bugs
perch dead still
or fly right at you.

The day after
I woke in the dark
to a loud scraping.
It was perched on a foam cup
rubbing its jaw on the lip.

Another time,
I cut one in half with a hoe —
both ends scrambled
into the grass.

Don Krieger is a biomedical researcher living in Pittsburgh, PA. His poetry has appeared online in Uppagus Magazine, Entropy, Tuck, Vox Populi Sphere, and others, in print in Hanging Loose (1972) and Neurology, and in several print anthologies including in both English and Farsi in Persian Sugar in English Tea, Volumes I and III.