Scorpions and humans share 

                 viviparity.

 

In the winter, I consider 

becoming a mother, 

 

carry a high-risk pregnancy,

weigh the risks of death, deformity,

 

As the scorpion sits in her glass 

 

her spindle legs and black lobster claws 

lean against the air,

like a boxer 

in a ring. 

 

In one corner, a cup of mealworms, 

which I watch her devour

the night of the full moon,

 

after a very long fast.

In the opposite corner, 

a cup for water 

petaled with cedar.

 

She can go a year without eating. 

She can survive any cataclysm 

of temperature, or water.

She can do a jagged, black waltz.

 

She turns green-purple 

under the UV flashlight.

A neon sign, stealthy and seedy.

 

She climbed from the ocean onto a crust of land, 

                1,             000,                     000 years ago

So her lungs are books, 

like crabs. 

 

Her telson sharps in a curved crescent, 

where the venom lay. 

How much venom she makes, 

is her 

decision. 

Enough to kill 

or only stun.

 

“A hungry mother scorpion will eat her own babies 

if food is scarce”

 

About this poem: The title of this poem comes from Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. I read Huxley’s line “the old viviparous days” and I fell in love with it. Huxley’s whole story is comical, outrageous, very real. I then went on researching scorpions, and discovered that they also carry their young inside them and have live births, like humans. We have something in common; both violent, angry creatures. The end of my research yielded the quote, “A hungry mother scorpion will eat her own babies if food is scarce.” That is true. And striking. It made me contemplate postpartum depression and depression, in general, which I suffer from. How there are times when your sadness can make you want to tear your whole world apart.