Yellow Spiders by John C. Mannone

Yellow Spiders
John C. Mannone

I hid from the sky yellowed with the rotting sun,
and from bombs exploding behind the cumulonimbus.

My heart shattered anyway
shrapneling troops, tattering uniforms:

             the blue and the gray.

Young bones, pierced in the carnage,
escaped through muscle, through holes.

Thick filaments of blood threaded cotton-fields
until the spiders cried

            all eyes glued to their webs

hoping to catch flies buzzing like dragons
that spat fire from their mouths.

Legs folded, prayed
their finely woven nets wouldn’t be singed.

The sky purpled after the yellow fell;
the same bombs bursting in air snuffed out the sun.

            And the ground swallowed my soul.