Tussock Moths
by Angel Dionne
Borderline broadcast
crocheted - haphazardly
by grandma’s arthritic fingers.
She seals it indifferently,
sewing a red button with her lips
string between teeth
needle to tongue.
The basis for her claim?
Unknown.
Ben Gay on the knees.
Vick’s Vapor on the chest – to ward off tussock moths,
she tells me.
Sometimes she hacks them up
into a forewing littered tissue,
scrapes the larvae into a bowl,
serves them with milk and toast,
complains that they’ve skeletonized her lungs.
Angel Dionne is an assistant professor of English literature at the University of Moncton, Edmundston campus. In 2019, she completed her PhD in creative writing at the University of Pretoria. Her work has appeared Chicken Soup for the Soul, Sein Und Werden, Good Morning Magazine, The Molotov Cocktail, Crack the Spine, Everyday Fiction, The Peculiar Mormyrid and Narrow Doors in Wide Green Fields. Although she does write literary fiction, she also dabbles in the surreal and absurd. Finally, she co-edited a collection of essays entitled Rape Culture 101: Programming Change which was published by Demeter Press in 2020.