Poetry: No Rest For the Bug Guy by Mather Schneider

NO REST FOR THE BUG GUY 

 

It’s four days before Thanksgiving and windy 

and you’re dreading the next six weeks of holiday psychopathy

but at least the bugs are gone now because of the cold

still this nut-bag wants you to spray insect killer

in her gingerbread house

it’s unnecessarily toxic but you can’t

tell her that

because she’ll call your boss and tell him you made

her feel “uncomfortable”

so you go inside and follow the baseboard

with your hand sprayer  

squirting like a sick cat

the house is dripping with cesspool festive bric-a-brac

the walls the appliances the doorknobs 

there’s even a reindeer on the ceiling fan

mall music from the built-in surround sound system

she’s got not one Christmas tree

but seven

seven God damned Christmas trees

each one laboriously and nightmarishly adorned

shitloads of shiny trinkets and bulbs and tinsel

you can’t imagine how many hours went into it

she lives alone no husband or children or pet

this rich fat taffy-faced gnome who works from home

denying peoples’ loan applications

and you creep slowly through Santa’s freakish workshop

choking on the cinnamon and clove potpourri 

squirting the poison juice 

to kill the bugs in her mind

and she says Thank goodness you came

because my book club is tonight

like she should be congratulated 

sucking her cheeks as if on an invisible pacifier

you don’t ask which book is on the agenda

but it’s surely some fairytale ghostwritten crap-casserole 

you simply peer into her stuffed animal eyes

fake a smile and walk 

out down the finely laid brickway

like a hungover fool of an elf

past the monstrous inflated snowman pulling hopelessly at his

ropes.

Mather Schneider divides his time between Tucson, Arizona and northern Mexico. He has several books available including his first novel, The Bacanora Notebooks (Anxiety Press) and the recently released book of stories, Port Awful (Anxiety Press). He works as an exterminator.