The First of the Plagues
Really, anything can happen
in Chicago in April:
Pouring rain, thunder and hail
or freak three-foot snowstorms
or sunshine and blue skies
dotted with feathery white clouds.
But we weren’t expecting
all those goddamn exploding frogs.
It was a Wednesday morning,
otherwise unremarkable,
warm enough to wear
a lighter jacket.
Skies threatening rain,
but rain wasn’t in the forecast.
Also not in the forecast…
thousands upon thousands of
small green-gray frogs
covering every surface outside.
Your porch, the sidewalk,
the black asphalt of your driveway,
the hood and trunk and roof of your car.
I had stepped on a couple accidentally
and felt bad about that.
One leaped onto the arm of my jacket,
blinked at me apathetically,
then croaked and jumped away.
Then, maybe a few minutes later,
one by one, the frogs exploded.
Is “exploded” the right word?
No one knows.
But there was a sound like a popping balloon,
then all that remained
were some pink guts
splattered on your coat or your car or
against the brick or vinyl siding of your home.
You could hear police sirens and screams.
Frogs bursting all over the city.
Some idiots tried shooting at them
and hit their neighbors instead.
Schools were on lock-down.
Drivers were blinded when pink entrails
covered their windshields,
so cars were careening
onto the curb, colliding with fire hydrants
or smashing into each other.
Hospitals were filled with the victims
of those kinds of accidents
but also patients with panic attacks,
chest pains, and breathing difficulties.
It was a one-time mass amphibian detonation.
By lunchtime or so, it was all over.
In the days that followed,
biologists and ecologists and priests
appeared on morning talk shows
to attempt to explain what happened.
Some of them tried to characterize the croaking eruption
as a natural self-defense mechanism gone wrong
or some kind of aberrant genetic mutation.
Some of them blamed global warming.
There was talk of bioterrorism
and sinister government conspiracies.
Others called it a pestilence from God.
All I know is,
every dog in the city
thought it was the single best day
of their entire lives.
Really, anything can happen
in Chicago in April:
Pouring rain, thunder and hail
or freak three-foot snowstorms
or sunshine and blue skies
dotted with feathery white clouds.
But we weren’t expecting
all those goddamn exploding frogs.
It was a Wednesday morning,
otherwise unremarkable,
warm enough to wear
a lighter jacket.
Skies threatening rain,
but rain wasn’t in the forecast.
Also not in the forecast…
thousands upon thousands of
small green-gray frogs
covering every surface outside.
Your porch, the sidewalk,
the black asphalt of your driveway,
the hood and trunk and roof of your car.
I had stepped on a couple accidentally
and felt bad about that.
One leaped onto the arm of my jacket,
blinked at me apathetically,
then croaked and jumped away.
Then, maybe a few minutes later,
one by one, the frogs exploded.
Is “exploded” the right word?
No one knows.
But there was a sound like a popping balloon,
then all that remained
were some pink guts
splattered on your coat or your car or
against the brick or vinyl siding of your home.
You could hear police sirens and screams.
Frogs bursting all over the city.
Some idiots tried shooting at them
and hit their neighbors instead.
Schools were on lock-down.
Drivers were blinded when pink entrails
covered their windshields,
so cars were careening
onto the curb, colliding with fire hydrants
or smashing into each other.
Hospitals were filled with the victims
of those kinds of accidents
but also patients with panic attacks,
chest pains, and breathing difficulties.
It was a one-time mass amphibian detonation.
By lunchtime or so, it was all over.
In the days that followed,
biologists and ecologists and priests
appeared on morning talk shows
to attempt to explain what happened.
Some of them tried to characterize the croaking eruption
as a natural self-defense mechanism gone wrong
or some kind of aberrant genetic mutation.
Some of them blamed global warming.
There was talk of bioterrorism
and sinister government conspiracies.
Others called it a pestilence from God.
All I know is,
every dog in the city
thought it was the single best day
of their entire lives.
Diagnosis
Betrayed.
Betrayed by my left tit.
But it’s important to forgive,
forgive at the cellular level.
You’ve got enough to battle.
The cancer, your job,
Central Scheduling,
your insurance.
Betrayed.
Betrayed by my left tit.
But it’s important to forgive,
forgive at the cellular level.
You’ve got enough to battle.
The cancer, your job,
Central Scheduling,
your insurance.
Karen Steiger is a poet, fiction writer, and future breast cancer survivor living in Schaumburg, Illinois, with her beloved husband, Matt, and two retired racing greyhounds, Giza and Horus. She is the founder of her poetry blog, The Midlife Crisis Poet (themidlifecrisispoet.com), and her work has been published in The Wells Street Journal, Arsenika, The Pangolin Review, Black Bough Poetry, Pendemic, Ang(st), Perhappened, Kaleidotrope, and Twist in Time.