AUTHOR'S NOTE:

I grew up with a specific sort of arachnophobia. My father almost lost his leg to a brown recluse when I was eight years old or so. The poem is a response to that fear.

BIO:

Michael Shewmaker’s poems appear or are forthcoming in Yale Review, Southwest Review, Sewanee Theological Review, American Arts Quarterly, Measure, and elsewhere. He is a PhD candidate in creative writing at Texas Tech University and an editor for Iron Horse Literary Review and 32 Poems.