No Treachery of Maggots, by Kyle Potvin

The Treachery of Images, by Rene Magritte (Belgium) 1929.

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​No Treachery of Maggots
 
They eat us up. Snack on the wounds of the world.
Who can blame them for saving themselves?
 
But, think of this: we might live on
In the lifecycle of a maggot.
 
Maggot to fly.            
Egg to maggot to fly.
 
Let’s rename them. Something beautiful.
Call them what we want to be.
 
A Saint.
A Thinker.
An Artist.
 
Use a word like Medjugorje.
Marginalia.
Magritte.
 
Yes, call them Magritte. Remember
Ceci n’est pas une pipe?

This is not a pipe. This is a poem.
Thank goodness this is not a maggot.
 
And this is not
The end.

Kyle Potvin

Kyle Potvin’s chapbook, Sound Travels on Water (Finishing Line Press), won the 2014 Jean Pedrick Chapbook Award. She is a two-time finalist for the Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award. Her poems have appeared in Bellevue Literary Review, Crab Creek Review, The New York Times, Measure, JAMA, and others. She is an advisor to Frost Farm Poetry in Derry, NH, and helps produce the New Hampshire Poetry Festival. Kyle lives with her family in Southern New Hampshire.