Assigned the alias double-O
you’re a metastatic secret agent
bearing a license to kill.
A glass frog unendingly slipping
between hide-and-seek and
catch me if you can.
Nanoscopic, eggshell, and most unassuming,
you crouch motionless in daylight,
translucent belly flat against leaves.
I refuse to fiddle your
wicked game titled bunny rabbit
plucked from a magician’s hat
because you are a full-
bodied optical illusion, inside out.
You’ve turned my mother’s Gethsemane
an Ellis Island to embrace
strangers from unknown, desolate parts;
a canopy to kennel squatters
where they first laid dormant,
then mushroomed into unruly contagion.
I know you for what
you are—providence gone haywire.
Joel Anthony Harris was a 2024 Best of the Net Award and 2025 Pushcart Prize nominee. His poems have appeared in Moko Magazine, Grub Street Literary Magazine, Heavy Feather Review, Bayou Magazine, and elsewhere. He currently studies at McGill University. INSTA
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