Slug

By Andrew Hanson

 

Unhurried hustle, wet
tenderness, and survival
spiral around its shell.
Anything caught in its outer
orbit might be tempted to attack
as the slug slips back into its
black center, and hides
for an eternity or two, while
bugs, blisters, and old garbage
burst, and the red maple
sinkts to its green center ,
a shriveled seed of itself.
The slug mistrusts the cadenced
march of army ants like royal
annals, and the thrush’s sweet
trills that lifts in a salt-pillared palace.
It sees only green feasts, and the leaves
eaten only to rise again in coups
lit by the sun, and the bulb’s
moon-bathed schemes of indiscriminate
and rooted distributions. Behind
the slug, history glimmers in a trail of
goo illuminated, an old roadmap, and,
like everything under the sun,
withers out of thin air.

 

Andrew Hanson from USA grew up skimming through the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico on a small boat in search for schools of mangroves and yellowtails with his Dad, a local fisherman. He is a native of Florida, and he took an interest in writing and literature and pursued a BA in English at Westmont College. There, he developed a holistic artistic vision in poetry and photography. He reveals in his work the contradictions of modern culture and how it positions the sum of humans, animals, and things.