Carolyn Hoople Creed 

Bathtub Spider

Unwelcome guest, the spindle-leg beast
occupies glumly her corner of tub-bottom:
we did not choose to host the creature;
she did not pick this spot for her demise.
She can gain no egress up steep porcelain,
yet ingress, down suck-drain, will not profit.

Like a lawyer who botched a paternal estate,
this spider peers to find herself in too deep
and must decide to bite at any character
who may try to extract her. In this situation,
arranged by accident, a last stand’s imminent:
an arachnid trapped thus won’t muster trust.

However, questions of agency—by which hand
(attached in most dramas to a deus ex machina)
may she be lifted with kind intention?—will not
plague the ponder-speck of brain: only motion
onto the hung ledge of a Star Maps textbook
might enable her escape. What chances has she?

Like the bad lawyer, she shuffles onto whatever
shelf will free her from entrapment (though only
one of them will find the trope satisfactory).




Carolyn Hoople Creed will be a professor of English Literature and Creative Writing at Brandon University until June 30th, 2012; after that date, she will occupy the same position at University College of the North. Her poetry has recently appeared in sub-Terrain, The Windsor Review, and Global Poetry Anthology (Vehicule Press). The montrealpoetryprize.com website is the best one for  a view of Dr. Creed’s work and profile. 




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