IMMIGRANTS

The shores are overrun with immigrants, flooding in
on high tide with the boats. False widows
hiding out in banana consignments and crayfish,
bigger than the native species, invading streams
the length and breadth of England. In some counties,
catching non-natives is legal due to the threat
to the indigenous white claws. They hate our laws.

Off the motorway, bodies swing at regular junctures.
Flies dizzy the corpses and beyond, at the horizon,
a distant city glows like an explosion. You drive fast.
Your headlamps, worrying the country lane hedge-bottoms,
riddle hares into the road. You are coming Deep South 
to the white folk. Here, their blood-cross flag swears
something gonna happen. Somehow.

SPIDER LIES

I was eight fingers,
spinning a lie, eight legs
and a web. No cunting flies
could get me or kiss me.
I fingered my threads
like a harpist; foot spittle
that felt their intrusions.

Spiders never marrry.

Eight lies. A dog.
A bird coccooned in silk.
A feather duffed with dust.
My mother and father
spun like thread. A stiff web.
Spiders never marry.
Gay men never kiss.

URBAN LEGEND

for SM

The only urban legend I believe
is that deadly spiders travel 
from the tropics in banana crates 
and are hiding under buckets 
in our cellar–head or shed 
to bite our fingers when we need
to mop the kitchen.

I have seen them, and their nit-like
bodies, pretending to be hands
in webs as wide as duvets
underneath the floorboards.
At night they come up
through the carpet like dragon's teeth
and scurry and creep up the walls
and in shoes. 
Our feet are afraid of death.

Nothing can kill them. They live
in my dreams and are covered
in neon stripes that say,
in flashes of yellow and red,
We are coming for you. We are coming
over continents in bunches
of bananas to murder you.