Ellen Kombiyil
2025 Michelle Boisseau Poetry Prize Finalist
—
Armadillo
Our landlady said “No pets.”
The mice in the walls didn’t count.
I wanted an armadillo. The toilet
Always overflowed, I was tired of paying rent.
What would I do with an armadillo
How would I care for it what
Would it eat where would it sleep
How could I be responsible for
Its armadillo happiness?
I thought its ridged skin
Would offer a kind of protection.
Would it eat grapes would
It feast on the leaves of lilacs
When dusk descends?
All winter mice streamed in.
I confess I killed them
And got my kids to help too.
At night we’d fry bacon, collect
Drippings, dip chips in fat
& set traps—fat upon fat—
Then turn out the lights.
Clack clack went the traps.
Armadillo of flight armadillo
As talisman armadillo of no
Harm armadillo of wanting
To live. O to walk with armadillo
Feet sinking into the mud.
In the morning I logged
Photographs, wrapped mice
In plastic & like a cat
After all night prowling
Brings offerings to her lord
I deposited them outside the landlady’s door.
Shame armadillo has no place
In this poem. You armadillo
With your hard-shell skin you
With no fable assigned to your kin
No moral to alight my straight path
No future no past just the facts
Armadillo. You who squeaks and scurries
Who across formica clacks
You in splendor my little turtle hare
My teensy jerre-jerre, o to allow
(To allow!) the heart to be tender.
Ellen Kombiyil (she/her) is a visual artist, poet, and educator from the Bronx. She is the author of three books and two chapbooks, most recently My Prayer a Slit Throat (winner of the New Constructions Hybrid Book Prize, forthcoming Wet Cement Press 2026), Diagnostic on the Plumbing and Wiring of Females (Visual Poetry Series Award, forthcoming Anhinga Press 2026), and Love as Invasive Species (Cornerstone 2024). She is a 2022 and 2025 recipient of a BRIO Award from the Bronx Council on the Arts, a 2025 winner of the Geri Digiorno Multi-Genre Prize, and 2025 winner of the Tupelo Quarterly Prize for Cross-Disciplinary Writing. Her work has appeared in The Adroit Journal, DIAGRAM, Sixth Finch, and Ploughshares. She is an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Hunter College.
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