Passenger by Kelle Groom

I was babysitting a scorpion not
by choice but had helped my co-worker
move, and she’d left it in a cage
behind the passenger seat on the floor
of my Toyota When asked why
she couldn’t take the scorpion with her
my co-worker said she needed a few days
I didn’t look in the backseat worried
the bars on the cage might be too widely
spaced and in the dark singing
I might feel its many legs crawling in my hair
My co-worker had long curly hair that looked
dunked in oil not just naturally shiny but like
a bird drenched from a spill offshore
so you couldn’t tell where the bird began
Too terrified to ask what the scorpion ate
scrabbling behind me in the dark
I heard they glow in moonlight
A scorpion chauffeur I drove it around
town until my co-worker took him home
Never looked in his five pairs of eyes
though what would I even look like
to a scorpion maybe he’s nearsighted
colorblind I had to disengage to drive
the car pretend there was no scorpion
nothing that can kill me everything
is normal everything is fine.

Kelle Groom is the author of four poetry collections, Underwater City (University Press of Florida), Luckily, Five Kingdoms, and Spill (Anhinga Press); a memoir, I Wore the Ocean in the Shape of a Girl (Simon & Schuster), a Barnes & Noble Discover selection and New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice; and most recently, How to Live: A Memoir in Essays (Tupelo Press). An NEA Fellow, Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellow, and recipient of two Florida Book Awards in poetry, Groom’s work has appeared in AGNI, American Poetry Review, Best American Poetry, The New Yorker, New York Times, Ploughshares, and Poetry.

Published October 15 2025