“Irritable Reaching Syndrome” by James Davis May

There was so much quicksand
in the movies when I was a kid,
so that’s what I think of as I watch
an ant thrash on the carnivorous leaf
of a butterwort plant, each attempt
to free itself from the viscid tongue
only making the situation worse,
a dawning panic as it lifts a leg
and with its mandibles tries to snip off
one of the gelatinous strings
that bind it to the leaf so it looks
like an upside-down marionette.
In the movies, the hero survives
because he knows not to move.
The sidekick, though, flails and sinks
until only his hand reaches above the sand.
Then the hero eyes the vines overhead.
In real life, aren’t we always the sidekick,
watching the cake fall into itself
because we opened the oven too soon,
just like the recipe warned us not to,
or the ones who spend the weekend
matching symptoms with diseases
while we wait for the doctor
who will call on Monday afternoon
with the results from the scan
and say whether it will be surgery
or blood thinners or both or just maybe
a trip down to the liquor store to buy
a bottle of celebratory champagne,
the cork’s pop loud as the smack
the mud makes as the hero hoists
the supporting actor out of certain death,
still covered with the stuff
like some thick batter or afterbirth?
And though we thought it would be okay
because the movie was only halfway done,
we still worried that maybe the director
wanted to make some sort of point
about life or loss or grief or God,
who has been known Himself to ruin
a perfectly good story by making us ask
what all this struggling really means.

James Davis May is the author of two poetry collections, most recently Unusually Grand Ideas (LSU Press, 2023). He has received fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. He directs the creative writing program at Mercer University.

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