Pest Control
An infestation in the neighborhood
of twenty-one-year-olds in polo shirts—
emblazoned “VerminX”—has run amok.
Hard to get rid of, one came up and stood
outside the door and knocked. We introverts
hurry to shut the children up and duck
below the windows. Is he gone? I peek.
I freeze. He sees me. Awkwardly I creak
the screen door open, let him speechify
how VerminX can treat our place and scrape
it clean of every spider, tick, and louse.
After accepting pamphlets with a lie
(I’ll have to ask my husband), I escape
and scuttle like a roach into the house.
Cara Valle’s poems have appeared in The Rotary Dial, Mezzo Cammin, The Lyric, The Grub Street Grackle, First Things, The Remembered Arts, and Epiphany. She lives in Northern Virginia with her husband and four children and is an MFA student with the University of St. Thomas in Houston.