Pandora’s Weevils

Xiao Hui Lau

Patterns radiating
from the center–the feeding ground of
black bodies of chitin.

Labyrinths,
a haunting maze of tender craters
carved in the inner cambrial layer.

Long-term guests,
the ones that burrow
under your skin–pulling
every hair at the pericranium core.

And so
we’ve come to help–
wage war
on the marauding arthropods.

We’ll make them–
uncomfortable–put them
so ill at ease we’ll have them
out of their own exoskeleton.

Ruin every
mating strategy–
annihilate the septated grub
that is their offspring

They squirm
from that acoustic stress,
there like that
insufferable greeting card–singing
“Happy Birthday”.

They might flee–
attempt to escape
the squeaky chords
of this lethal exposition–
a crackly coda
and then da capo

What is it
about these sounds
–to humans, just the
squeak of fingers against
clean dishes–that
bothers them so?

Beetle-to-Beetle savagery
the tampered voices of
their own kind drives them
helter-skelter,
turns them violent–mad
with confusion.

This insect infestation turns
homicidal
as the males
tear their mates
apart vehemently
piece by piece–

A wave of
miniature excavations
halted in their progress
their
archaeologists—
vulnerable vermin.

Victims of sonic onslaught,
Surrender was inevitable–
the black
weevils, are they
gone?
We’ll be back–they said.
10 or 20 years.