Marcyn Del Clements
Cockroaches
We chalked our baseboards for cockroaches the evening of the day they got Bin Laden.
He had been holing up in a peaceful town, Abbottabad, a short motorcycle ride from the capital of Pakistan; on a quiet street, hidden in a compound,
shielded by an unknown woman.
She was shot too. They airlifted him, took DNA samples, dumped his body in the ocean, where fish dine on terrorists.
In the morning, we pick up 10 dying cockroaches, on their backs, spinning, their feet in the air.
outside a bee
spins on the pool’s surface
I get the net
lift it out of the water
it dries in the sun and flies
About the Author
Marcyn Del Clements has published haiku since the mid-1990s in the major print journals, and online since the early 2000s. She has won awards in Haiku Headlines and received an honorable mention in the haiku contest at Haiku North America 2017. She is one of three co-editors of the rengay journal Tandem. Clements has lived in Claremont, California, since 1975.