My name is Podrigotuma and this morning I ushered a mouse out of my kitchen.

I'm staying in a place that is right next to a farmer's field and so it's inevitable that this is going to be mice.

I see them regularly outside stealing the seeds that I leave out for birds.

You see one of the mice coming out and taking some seeds and bringing them back under a hedge presumably to feed her young.

And when I saw the mouse inside the house I didn't want to kill it and a friend is visiting and we ushered with kind of squealing their mouse outside and then gave ourselves an idiotic self-congratulatory clap.

I definitely do not want mice in the house but I definitely also have changed because I've seen them feeding themselves, feeding their offspring and seeing them in that environment has changed the way I feel about them when we have to share an environment.

Mama cockroach I love you by Fiona Benson.

Because you cozy with the aunties in your wreaking slums and are intimate and sweet because you begrudge no one a meal but ooze a fecal trail to lead your commune to its source like a dirty bee.

Because you are joyfully promiscuous because you pouch your young and hide them in the sweaty creases of the house near super rating food so they'll hatch to a feast or keep your eggs with you in a special purse shaped like a kidney bean and clutch it fast or reinsert them into your abdomen and wound them there.

Or carry them as yokes and give life birth then feed your pale brood secretions from your anus or your armpit glands like milk or deep in the flesh of a rotten log pass them a bolus of pre-digested food mouth to mouth.

Because you suffer your young to swarm upon your back and do not flinch or buck them off but carry them like a human playing horsey with her children down on hands and knees decrying the swag of her own loose flesh.

Because you twirl your antenna gracefully to test your crawl space because strokingly you caress your offspring's backs and gentle them with pretty pheromones and chirps.

Because you purr when your young stroke your face because you would leave your body for your offspring to dine upon all the liquors and gravy of the obscene world your work in the crannies delivered to the living.

Because you are despite all rumors mortal and what if you are crushed before your eggs can be delivered what if your sisters drive you hissing out what if your kitchen is fumigated what if the mongoose the lizard to snake a muscular tongue prying at the warm and greasy interstices of your stubborn occupancy

takes you in its mouth someone must care for the dirt.

This poem by Fiona Benson is one of a number of poems about or two insects that she has gathered as the first section of her latest book and I love it.

Mama cockroach I love you there's such exuberance in it there are over 4,000 different types of cockroach and they're under the term blatto dear which is mentioned as the first word of the poem.

I'm not the biggest fan of cockroaches but I came to this with deep interest know what she going to say broadly the poem is a collection of 10 reasons because because because because because there's 10 magnificent because in the poem I see that is a way that the poem is held together and one of them is about the cockroach and community and other is generosity one is about being joyfully promiscuous one is about parenting another about playing with your children.

One is about loving being loved back another is about self sacrificing love and the final one is about mortality there is such overt emotion and there's a deep naming of something I love you but even before that Mama cockroach I've never in my life seen Mama before cockroach.

This is I think one of the functions of poetry is to do interesting things with language that make you think I haven't seen this arrangement before and therefore from that to allow your world to be recalibrated to be defamiliarized and re familiarized into a new way of thinking.

There is so much about the life of the cockroach that's explored here the social and caring life of the cockroach cozy with your aunties in the first line then intimate and sweet and joyfully promiscuous playful with your young I love the line carry them like a human playing horsey with her children.

And then pressing the offspring back and purring when your young stroke your face in all of this there is deep tenderness and one of the themes that's happening underneath that is where the poem culminates which is the death whether that's by fumigation or by among goose or a lizard or snake that muscular tongue or they're driven out of the kitchen what if your kitchen is fumigated and I don't think that this your is the listener.

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