A Microdosing, Unemployed Millennial Considers a Termite Colony
by Catriona Wright
like everyone else, I fear
the mother
manipulating their lives
that queen, pale
and pampered
in her chamber, dazzling
pheromones
sterilizing
her competitors
as she creates more
and more workers,
devourers, destroyers
a brood of obedient
collaborators
in her wild delusion
what would it feel like
to surrender
to that swarm
to dream termite dreams
of constructing a self-
cooling cathedral
as grand as
La Sagrada Familia
only with nurseries
instead of naves
our queen,
our queen, ecstatic
with eggs,
each pale jewel
beloved, already
an extension
of our shared mind,
that orgiastic,
delirious structure built
to resist the self’s
insistence
Catriona Wright is a writer, editor, and teacher. Her most recent poetry collection, Continuity Errors, was a finalist for the 2024 Trillium Book Award for Poetry. She is also the author of the poetry collection Table Manners and the short story collection Difficult People. Her writing has appeared in The American Poetry Review, The Walrus, Grain, The New Quarterly, and The Next Wave: An Anthology of 21st Century Canadian Poetry.