Wayne Lee lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Lee’s poems have appeared in Pontoon, Slipstream, The New Guard, The New Mexico Poetry Review, and other journals and anthologies. He was awarded the 2012 Fischer Prize and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and three Best of the Net Awards. His collection The Underside of Light was a finalist for the 2014 New Mexico/Arizona Book Award. He is currently working on a memoir called Service Husband: A Caregiver’s Journey Through Disability, Suicide and Recovery.
“‘She Weaves the World’ was prompted by She Comes with Fire and Weaves the World, beadwork by Rainy Dawn Ortiz that appears on the cover of her mother Joy Harjo’s memoir, Poet Warrior (2021).”
I trapped two brown recluse last night and released them
out-of-doors. Some say spiders foretell happiness,
and that may be so, but Loxosceles reclusa strike fear
in my heart. One bit a friend last year and its necrotic venom
left a crater right between her eyes. Brown recluse belong
in nature, not crouched on my saltillo tiles or concealed
in my blankets or pajamas. I want all spiders to be happy
and free to wrap their victims like mummies for later
consumption, so long as it’s not in my house. I want to wake
at dawn, to walk outside and find the networks of wonder
they weave from their spinnerets, to marvel at the droplets
of dew glistening like tiny crystals in the lattice of their mesh.
I want to see their constructions as master works, their flat
bodies and spindly legs as colored beads in intricate patterns
adorned with blue exes for insects and a border of stripes
depicting the four directions. Let my recluse visitors spin
a wild world in which I exist as co-creator, not mere observer,
and most definitely not as prey.
