“Insidious!” hisses the antiquarian,
spotting a Lesser Fanged Woodworm,
“will eat up my heirlooms
over the shorter term
will spell my doom
over the longer! Being

what, in a nightmare, I knew
was hatching deep
in the oaken stew
of an 1890s bureau—
The kind you keep for keeps!
The kind you rub a lemoned cloth into

and murmur sweet sweet declarations
if a furniture fetish is your inclination!”
He seizes up a metal-tipped
and violent-looking cane
and, thrusting, bites his lip
as he stabs the worm again and again.