Studio8 - Uniting the Arts

Flypapers hung in the kitchen
Of Auntie’s house. Death traps
For flies that buzzed at their ends
Or buzzed noisily from surface
To surface unaware the brown
Sticky strips were there to trap.
You stared at the long brown strips
Covered in flies, some buzzed fruitlessly,
Others were quiet and still, having
Given up the will to buzz or make noise
Just hanging there black corpses on
Brown paper, a graveyard swaying in
The draught from the wide open door
To buzz and fly and irritate no more.

Flypaper breaks my heart...at least as much, if not more, than gluetraps for rats and mice...not that I like either one. But vermin are trapped in their element, on the ground, in corners and in shadows and filth. But flies...even though they're born in crap and like to play around on corpses...flies have the freedom of the sky. How can we stop flying things? How can we--who spend such immense resources on flight--tack up wings on wastepaper and not be heartbroken while they writhe in antilocomotion?

Thank you, Joel. We have never used them, but my aunt did back then and they were quite gastly to gaze at in the kitchen.