White Tarantulas

Revised Edition: LukivPress (Victoria, BC), 2022.

An excerpt

Tarantula

Far from Scythian
Females, in
The Amazon-
Jungle of monster-
Leaves, where
Nobody severs
The right breast
To make the bow fit,

Little-clad
Men-folk eat
Tarantulas. Held
Between two sticks
Over flames that burn off
Leg-hair, the
Salty meat sizzles
And steams.

Tang and season are as
Foreign as a Visa card
Or an army helmet. But
Tarantulas abound. Crack
Open
The crustacean shell
For the jungle-
Candy.

An entomologist on CBC
Said you cannot compare
The meat to anything-
Not to rabbit or chicken:
Tarantula is to tarantula
As bullets are to bullets
And hate is to hate.

These people love tarantulas.
They love the spicy
Meat.

The author

Dan Lukiv, published in 19 countries, is a poet, novelist, columnist, short story and article writer, and independent education researcher (hermeneutic phenomenology). As a creative writer, he apprenticed with Canada's Professor Robert Harlow (recipient of the George Woodcock Achievement award for an outstanding literary career), the USA's Paul Bagdon (Spur Award finalist for Best Original Paperback), and England's D. M. Thomas (recipient of the Cheltenham Prize for Literature, Orwell Prize [biography], Los Angeles Fiction Prize, and Cholmondeley award for poetry). He attended The University of British Columbia (creative writing department), the acclaimed Humber School for Writers (poetry writing program), and Writer's Digest University (novel writing program).