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Evolution

BY Martha Rhodes

The golden and extraordinary frogs eat us
bug-less — gloriously — then vanish somehow.
But all over us this spring, mosquitoes,
returned, and triumphant, the low chorus
from the pond just memory, replaced
by a buzzing that sears through our ears
and bloodies — devours — our limbs and faces.
Carnage on our decks. We’ll stay inside, mostly,

hereafter. What’s happened to the frogs? Remember
when we had frogs? Do you suppose this is just another
extinction? …What are frogs? the children sputter.
Our screens chewed through, we flee blanketed and hurtling
toward our car — but where go? — those animate engines
at our heels (in the rearview mirror, My God! what’re those?) —

Biography

MARTHA RHODES is the author of three collections of poetry: At the Gate (Provincetown Arts Press, 1999); Perfect Disappearance (Green Rose Prize, New Issues Press, 2000); and Mother Quiet (Zoo Press, 2004). Her poems have been published in journals such as AGNI, American Poetry Review, Columbia, Fence, New England Review, Pleiades, Ploughshares and TriQuarterly, among others. Her work has also been anthologized in AGNI 30 Years (2002); Extraordinary Tide: New Poetry by American Women (Columbia University Press, 2001); and The New American Poets: A Bread Loaf Anthology (University Press of New England, 2000). She teaches at Sarah Lawrence College and at the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. She is also the director of Four Way Books in New York City.