When I was a girl
I saw my best friend’s father
pour a pot of boiling water
on a colony of ants in the driveway—
everyday of summer
they spent in that hill,
minding business,
paying dues,
and then
                  crisp

this is
what it is
to be paperless—
to spend life building a home,
to be treated as a pest,
waiting in fear
of the burn

 

Hannah Monsour is a professional typewriter poet and actress based in Brooklyn, N.Y. She writes custom, on-the-spot poems on her 1952 Smith Corona.