Skip to main content
  • 25 Lines or Fewer

Insect

By Annie Finch

That hour-glass-backed,
orchard-legged,
heavy-headed will,

paper-folded,
wedge-contorted,
savage—dense to kill—

pulls back on backward-moving,
arching
high legs still,

lowered through a deep, knees-reaching,
feathered down
green will,

antenna-honest,
thread-descending,
carpeted as if with skill,

a focus-changing,
sober-reaching,

tracing, killing will.

Reprinted with permission of the author and Story Line Press.

Poet Bio

Annie Finch is the author or editor of more than twenty books of poetry, plays, translation, literary essays, textbooks, and anthologies. Finch holds degrees from Yale University, University of Houston, and Stanford University. She has taught at several universities, most recently the University of Southern Maine where she served for nine years as director of the Stonecoast MFA Program. She lives on the coast of Maine.

See More By This Poet