On the Virtues of the Fly
By Cynthia Dewi Oka

Bless you, tiny blue-backed submarine, humming
with war, humbling creatures five hundred times

your size, who, for all their gates and locks and alarm
systems can’t stop you from penetrating the rooms

that for all the feng shui, and bleach, and curation
by erasure (but does it spark joy?!) can’t hide from

you the stench of waste that once throbbed with
living. What we discard, finally, in shame or excess;

what we cannot digest; what we’ve given up trying
to resuscitate; what we break in rage, and refuse to

grieve: you lay your eggs in. And while we stare
at glowing screens in our hands, wishing for other

versions of ourselves, your larvae hatch, and feed, and
burrow into the open wounds of the world to grow

their wings. When ready, just like you they’ll rudder,
jeweled with pollen, through the liquid gray of cities

raised on crushed hills, vaporized rivers, forests
flattened to asphalt. What do you care about derision?

About the old, impotent hatreds? Your conscience is
clean. Small, brief god. You see me as I can never see

myself: through many points of light. The marigold,
peach, grasshopper I could become when you and even

smaller gods are done feasting, when the curtain rises
on the other side of the quiet to which all stories return.