mayflies
by Kachina Yeager
in the high heat of summer, there are so many dead mayflies that they pile into drifts like snow, have to literally be shoveled away.
although i find mayflies disgusting, part of me can’t help but think this is protest on their part,and that makes me smile—makes me feel kinship.
droves of mayflies live & die on lock & dam #3 each year,
droves of mayflies say “fuck government property” each year.
i drive down to the lock & dam with snow on the ground just because i can,
i say “fuck government property” by taking a picture of the camera eye watching me.
did you know that many researchers consider mayflies an indicator species?
did you know that their population declined by more than 50% from 2012 - 2019?
one preteen summer, a swarm of mayflies stood between me, my sister, and gas station
sweets.
a gate blocking us on either side, we could only go through the flitting storm ahead.
we held hands as i counted us into a run: one two three! she let go, and
on the other side, i turned back to see her stopped halfway through, screaming like death.
i ran back in, pulled her from the wreckage of abundant wings.
we both screamed picking mayflies—alive and dead—from our hair.
did you know that the army corps of engineers are headquartered in the mf’n pentagon?
i wish the mayflies could find them there. barricade the doors with their bodies. drifts.
let them dredge that river of wings and death, energize the economy of cascading bodies,
let these empty husks be the bones they’ve washed away in the interest of national security.
driving over the river, air damp with summer and spawning, the lights along the bridge go
dark for two days,
lest the accumulating bodies implicating us all in the casual hazard of their slickness.
hear hear hear the hordes of membranous buffeting,
hear hear hear holiness and justice are not cousins,
hear hear hear hear hear not here. not here. not hear. here hear here hear here hear here
Kachina Yeager (they/them/she) is an enrolled member of Prairie Island Indian Community (Bdewakaŋtuwaŋ Dakota) in Mni Sota Makoče and a full-time grad student of poetry in the Creative Writing MFA program at the University of Minnesota, from which they also hold a Bachelors of Individualized Studies combining American Indian Studies, Sociology, and Global Studies with a focus on Global Indigeneity. When not at home in Imniža Ska Othuŋwe (Saint Paul), in the classroom, in a book, or staring into the looming void of the blank page, they can most often be found at the banks of Ȟaȟa Wakpa (the Mississippi River) watching ducks swim and trees grow.
