1 Poem by Greg Kosmicki

At the Computer

and a miller
crawled around on the light.
They love the light.
They are drawn to it.

The miller was upside-
down on the fluorescent bulb
about five inches
away from me.

When I was a boy
in wheat country
we’d get thousands.

They are the moth
that grows from the larvae
called the cutworm

that attacks the roots of wheat.
We hated the millers.
And made traps for them
beneath lights

like this one
by placing a bowl
filled with soapy water
close beneath the light
so the millers
would hit the soapy water

and it would kill them.
My mother said

it’s because they are so filthy.
They are brown
and give off a lot of dust

which is what moths do
but that all fit in
beautifully with mom’s

world view too—
brown equals dirty
Indians equal brown
et cetera.

Anyway I look up tonight
from my computer
to look that upside-down
miller right
in its eye.

It moves
its antenna
as if it senses something.


Bionote

Greg Kosmicki is the founding editor and publisher of The Backwaters Press. He is the author of 3 books and 7 chapbooks of poems. His most recent chapbook is "New Route in the Dream" from Puddinghouse Publications, and he has a book forthcoming from Stephen F. Austin University Press, "Sheep can recognize individual human faces." He and his wife both work in human services in Omaha, Nebraska. <thebackwaterspress@gmail.com>