Slug

 

Slug

 

Unhurried hustle, wet

tenderness, and survival

spiral around its shell.

Anything caught in its outer

orbit might be tempted to attack

as the slug slips back into its

black center, and hides

for an eternity or two, while

bugs, blisters, and old garbage

burst, and the red maple

sinks to its green center,

a shriveled seed of itself.

The slug mistrusts the cadenced

march of army ants like royal

annals, and the thrush’s sweet

trills that lifts in a salt-pillared palace.

It sees only green feasts, and the leaves

eaten only to rise again in coups

lit by the sun, and the bulb’s

moon-bathed schemes of indiscriminate

and rooted distributions. Behind

the slug, history glimmers in a trail of

goo illuminated, an old roadmap, and,

like everything under the sun,

withers out of thin air.

 

 Andrew Hanson

Andrew Hanson is a native of Florida, and he took an interest in writing and literature and recently completed studies at UCL in London. He now lives in Miami, where among other things he works at a law firm, fishes on weekends, enjoys photography, lifts weights, and voraciously reads history, philosophy, and poetry. He has recently been accepted by the Broadkill Review, the Bookend Review, the Ekphrastic Review, Ariel Chart, Thirty West and more