Vermin

by Lance La Rocque

Vermin is a collection of diverse poems, matter-of-fact daydreams of body parts, money, family life, murder, children, and animals. Whimsical, unsettling, or creepy, depending on the reader's mood, the poems are united by an urge to crawl out from the suffocating spells of late capitalism, and take a look around.

Genres: Poetry

96 pages, Paperback

First published October 28, 2011

Reviews

[Nick Papaxanthos · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first poem in Vermin is titled “CAESURA” and indicative of the collection as a whole. There are no pauses, no half-times. These poems stick it out, words stretching like silly putty in self-inflicted tests for elasticity, life-span. How long until the tire is punctured and swerves you off the highway? How long before the heavy wind of sleep erases you? And while capitalism is eternal and eternally voracious, turning us into fish to snag us on its hook, childhood is obscured in memory and drains like a cyst in the basin of life. Vermin sees it all and puts up a fight. It kicks and screams and scratches against a future of mush, bodies “flopping / and inert,” even as the dull planet extinguishes and “insects flee / plants die / stones begin to melt.” A rabid bird bounces between the branches of La Rocque’s lines, and you never know whether it’ll sing like a divine messenger in the treetops, a “phonecall from heaven,” or swoop down and stick its ruthless beak in your ear.

For all the apocalyptic imagery, there’s an awkward resort to joy in this collection, a rusty spring in La Roque’s step. Vermin is occasionally swallowed in moments of light, even wackiness, Daffy Duck flattened by a steamroller but flung up and swaying back to earth like a leaf. The world is occasionally taken for a check-up, dewormed, defanged, disarmed of its missiles, its dry loose skin peeled off, and beneath, believe it or not, is light, births, birthdays, children effortlessly educated by TV, a “colourful wonder” of the world so easily forgotten — maybe even taken for granted — resurged in all its original vibrant glory. Hey, there’s even a poem in which death, the dark abyss and “stomach of the world,” is described as filled with “butterflies! butterflies! / swarming! swarming!” Maybe we’ll be okay after all (unless you’re lepidopterophobic).