Illustration Friday: Scattered

This girl walked into her bedroom to find that it had been overtaken by cockroaches! I wonder why she doesn't scream? I wish I could be that brave! 


The inspiration and text for this piece came from an Anne Sexton poem called "Cockroach." The poem perfectly conveys the panic I experience when I see a roach, but it also makes me feel just a little bit sorry for them, in a weird way. You can read the poem and see details of the collage after the jump:



COCKROACH


Roach, foulest of creatures
who attacks with yellow teeth
and an army of cousins big as shoes,
you are lumps of coal that are mechanized
and when I turn on the light you scuttle 
into the corners and there is this hiss upon the land.
Yet I know you are only the common angel
turned into, by way of enchantment, the ugliest.
Your uncle was made into an apple.
Your aunt was made into a Siamese cat,
all the rest were made into butterflies
but because you lied to God outrightly--
told him that all things on earth were in order--
He turned his wrath upon you and said,
I will make you the most loathsome,
I will make you into God's lie,
and never will a little girl fondle you
or hold your dark wings cupped in her palm.


But that was not true. Once in New Orleans
with a group of students a roach fled across
the floor and I shrieked and she picked it up
in her hands and held it from my fear for one hour.
And held it like a diamond ring that should not escape.
These days even the devil is getting overturned
and held up to the light like a glass of water.


From The Complete Poems of Anne Sexton

Are you afraid of roaches, too?