the 8th plague

The Book of Exodus, in the Old Testament,

has it this way: God inflicted ten calamities

on the nation of Egypt to persuade Pharaoh

to release God’s people from slavery

even though God was preventing Pharaoh

from freeing God’s people.

This sounds like human logic. And the plagues

aren’t in any sort of discernable order, either.

They don’t strike alphabetically or by subject

matter or by height or in order of least bad

to worst. Death of the firstborn does seem

like the worst to me – I’d have been a goner –

but boils, the 6th plague, seems worse than

turning water into blood, which “God” “does”

first. That’s just creepy.

And the one with the locusts. Did God send a billion

bugs from heaven or is swarming the kind of thing

locusts do? Locusts are usually solitary

unless there’s a drought followed by rapid vegetation

growth. The serotonin release this triggers

causes these introverts to get gregarious, breed

like mad and horde. Sure, this can inflict economic

and agriculture damage, but it’s been happening

for thousands of years wherever locusts live.

I sympathize with the Scripture writers, though.

When I’m facing powers far beyond my puny

control that are making me miserable,

the first thing I do, usually, is hurl a plague

of screams at every place I think God is,

and especially for every place I think God is not.

Megan Wildhood is a creative writer, scuba diver and saxophone player whose work includes a poetry chapbook Long Division (Finishing Line Press, 2017), which is about sororal estrangement; essays, fiction, poetry and nonfiction that have appeared, among other publications, in The Atlantic, The Sun, and Yes! Magazine. An excerpt of her novel manuscript has been published by AMP Hofstra’s Literary Magazine.