spider farm

all day i pace the house
with a glass & a piece of paper, 
collecting the spiders from all 
the corners of the ceiling.

i ask them what they want
to be when they grow up
& some of them say assassins 
& some of them say bakers
& some of the say writers
(& i laughed about that one)

none of them said they 
wanted to be spools of thread
but i continued anyway
because i wanted to teach
them the lesson that
you don't always become
what you think you will,

i use thumb tacs through
their legs to secure
them to the wall like postcards.

in come the scientists;
it turns out i wasn't
the only one who has tried
to harvest spider silk.

one scientists,
Bon de Saint Hilaire
tries to sell me his
pair of gloves he wove
from spider thread in the 1700s, 
they are brittle, coming apart
as he puts them on & 

assures me that they're
the soft & revolutionary,
even as they come apart.

another, Paul Camboue,
assembles his contraption,
a special machine for pulling
the glossy silk
from the Golden Orb Weaver spider,

he tells me he doesn't have
any Golden Orb Weavers 
so i should get in,

& all of a sudden i'm
small & eight-legged, saddled
in the harness as 
the contraption whirls

who knew i had so much 
to be pulled out of me,
the thread comes out course 
& wool-like.
the scientists shake their
heads at the coarse texture
we can't use this

& as the scientists work
i apologize to the spiders
on the walls & i think
they forgive me.

when the scientists leave 
they take the yarn with them
& i pull the push pins 
out of the wall one by one,

spiders dropping to
the floor & hurrying away
on their crushed limbs

you can be whatever you want
i say