Enjoy Your Garden says the sign above the canister of Insect Killer in Tesco

Julian Bishop

Enjoy the bland clamp of an aluminium assassin 
            the levelling of an off-the-shelf weapon

Enjoy the promise of being in TOTAL CONTROL
            the power of rendering a fly non-viable

Enjoy the venomous hiss, the citronella
spritz weaving its invisible, spiderless gossamer

Enjoy how fly’s brakes fail to engage, how the legs 
            back-pedal in the suffocating vapour

Enjoy how he’s gripped by seizures, muscles commencing
             a state of unstoppable contraction

Enjoy the body’s convulsions after the ejaculation
      delivering not life but a protracted death

Enjoy how his compound eyes become double 
            glazing, wings beating a frantic, furious static

Enjoy how fly rotates on a collapsing axis
            soiling himself in the windowsill’s detritus

Enjoy the eternal hang time, the bloodless
            aftermath, the buzz of a bugless kitchen

Enjoy sweeping up the litter of shrivelled buds,
            charred catkins scattered on the Formica

Enjoy your own absorption in the performance,
            the hollow ripple and canned laughter after – 

The Science

I long ago stopped using fly sprays around the house. Instead, I prefer the more labour-intensive but less harmful method of trapping flies with a glass and a postcard and then releasing them outside. What bothered me about fly sprays was the likelihood that a fly would suffer a bad death simply for being in my kitchen. Additionally, many fly sprays contain ingredients that also could adversely affect humans. I found validation for my concerns on thenakedscientists.com, a website I turn to for clear and straightforward answers to basic scientific questions. The site confirmed that flies indeed meet dreadful ends, as their muscles undergo uncontrollable contractions, ultimately leading to suffocation.

The inspiration for my poem came from a sign I saw in Tesco, which featured a large board urging customers to 'Enjoy Your Garden'. Beneath it, there were shelves filled with chemicals designed to kill insects that likely consider the garden their home. My poem questions whether this is really what we want to inflict on a small creature buzzing around our kitchen. It also prompts us to consider our contributions to the alarming fact that 41% of the Earth's five million insect species are now threatened with extinction.

The Poet

Julian Bishop’s first collection of eco poems called We Saw It All Happen was published in 2023 by Fly On The Wall Press. A former environment journalist turned poet, he lives in Hertfordshire and runs a small media company. He’s currently working on a follow-up collection of eco poems and on a separate set of poems about the Italian painter Caravaggio.

Next poem: Harvest by Gillian Neimark