Adam Sobel - Week 1 Poetry Blog: "HOW TO KILL A HOUSE CENTIPEDE BY SQUISHING IT BEHIND A PHOTO OF MIRIAM MAKEBA WHILE CONTEMPLATING VARIOUS ITERATIONS OF RIGOR MORTIS IN MY GENTRIFIED APARTMENT COMPLEX ON 750 MACDONOUGH STREET BROOKLYN, NY 11233" By: Aziza Barnes

I'm incredibly glad that I randomly picked Aziza Barnes as my poet because I loved her poem, "HOW TO KILL A HOUSE CENTIPEDE BY SQUISHING IT BEHIND A PHOTO OF MIRIAM MAKEBA WHILE CONTEMPLATING VARIOUS ITERATIONS OF RIGOR MORTIS IN MY GENTRIFIED APARTMENT COMPLEX ON 750 MACDONOUGH STREET BROOKLYN, NY 11233," the second I read the title. While the title is incredibly specific, I feel like we've all been in a spot where we have an insect infestation and try to kill the bug or bugs, but we never think about what we are doing.

The literal reading of this poem made me think about how to react when I'm faced with a bug. While they may be annoying, they are just trying to survive like the rest of us. The fact that they chose my house to live in is simply coincidence, not out of spite or bad luck. So why should I have to kill the bug? But then I think about what if it gets away and if there is a larger infestation just like Aziza did in the poem. Now is the dilemma of do I protect myself or protect the bug. And while the death of a bug may seem inconsequential, I do still feel bad for it and try not to kill them. But Aziza also shows in this poem how this scenario is more than just a tiny bug, but relates more to the human experience.

At first, Aziza just asks question about the bug like "are there a nest       of these? a hive of these? what do these call        each other when in a large       amorphous congregation? do these fall in        love & mate or       mate & hatch? which       is further from what I know? sometimes I can’t tell". These question can also be applied to humans and how we think of ourselves. What are we without groups of people to identify with, or people we love to confide in? She then continues to compare bugs to humans and how we act as infestations. Humans have spread across the world burrowing in places like bugs do and infesting the area with modern ideas or by destroying the natural landscape. She talks at the end about how we are similar to bugs and how we grapple today with the issues that our ancestors have created for us by "burrowing" around the world. She also asks question that apply to herself, like the capacity to love and be loved or trying to fight to exist in a world that pushes you down, just like the bug has to do in her apartment complex on 750 MacDonough Street Brooklyn, NY 11233.

An additional aspect of this poem that I really liked was the style that it was written. The text is written so that there is a large amount of spacing between random sections, meaning that you have to pay attention to what you are reading and making sure that you are understanding what you are reading. When I read poems I usually just skim them and try to pick out a main idea, but with her words literally divided randomly it makes it difficult to find important parts which I thought made the poem better because it made me read through and analyze each segment in order to understand what she was trying to literally and metaphorically write about.

Poem Link

Aziza Barnes


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