Carrie Weis
Under the David’s Sunflower Seed processing line
And over the throttled hum of compressors
my coworker tells me
about the brain eating amoeba.
He gorged a Netflix series on deadly bacteria
last night, while trying to fall asleep, he says.
They live in algae-covered waters,
and when you come along
and drink the water, or swim in it,
or grab water-fowl from
the shore, this predator travels
up your nasal cavity and into the folded hibiscus
of your sinus and thus enters your brain.
Then? Within 7-10 days
it carves out a home
in that walnut in your head.
But if you’re dead?
It colonizes the decomposing brain,
like moss on cedar stump.
Plus, he says, amoebas don’t care
about progeny the way we
care about progeny.
It only really wants to complete the cycle—
then simply leaves
dimpled zeroes
in the soft earth.
Daniel J. Flosi sometimes thinks they are an apparition living in a half-acre coffin within the V of the Mississippi and Rock Rivers. Daniel is a poetry reader at Five South, and is the founder/EiC of Black Stone / White Stone. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Funicular Magazine, Olney Magazine, Rejection Letters and many more. His chapbook Cries, the Midnight Sky is forthcoming (2023) with Bullshit Lit. Drop a line @muckermaffic.
Carrie Weis is an artist, writer, and educator. She holds a Master of Fine Arts in Painting from Kendall College of Art & Design, and a B.I.S. degree in Studio Fine Art with a minor in Art History from Ferris State University. She is active in her studio practice attending residencies and exhibiting in solo and group shows. Her works have been published on book covers and in art and literature periodicals.