allowables

I've been rereading Nikki Giovanni, who died in December. Her writing—her poetry, of course, but also prose—is so wonderful, but one of my favorite things is how spare and simple some of her poems are, and how she can just absolutely punch you in the stomach with like five words. This one, from her 2013 hybrid collection Chasing Utopia (here's the title essay of the book at Poetry Foundation), absolutely haunts me.

I killed a spider
Not a murderous brown recluse
Nor even a black widow
And if the truth were told this
Was only a small
Sort of papery spider
Who should have run
When I picked up the book
But she didn't
And she scared me
And I smashed her

I don't think
I'm allowed

To kill something

Because I am

Frightened

—Nikki Giovanni (1943-2024), "Allowables," from Chasing Utopia: A Hybrid (William Morrow, 2013)