CIX.
April 22, 2012 § Leave a Comment
Earth Day
bleached-white tiny fossils of a duck
four months —five months? since we met last
organs, excavated
feathers sparse, marks of time
unthreading sinew,
pale orange webbed motors
little nothing
of Oneness
no eyes no heart no lungs
maggots! make way for Now & Laters, Ritz, Twix, Tootsie rolls, Kettle, Hostess, Frito-Lay, Keebler, Chex, Cola, Cola, Cola, Cola, Cola, Hershey, Doritos, Kotex, Airheads, Little Debbie, Wonka, Oscar-Meyer, Oberto, Quaker, Honey Maid
(all natural) (organic) (USDA approved) (100% wheat) (recyclable) (renewable) (sustainable)
dropped here, forgotten, by human hands
hands: for invention, for demolition
plastic! seep to Our Iron Core
our Engine
revs; it sputters, kicks
converge, diverge; we rebuild
fiercer, much too sustainable we are
CII.
March 4, 2012 § 1 Comment
I am still mulling over the blurring of a coyote passing us over country road: I was driving, intent on the cars and the running road beneath me. My friend, she shouted. I braked, going sixty. Now at fifty, we barely missed the animal. It dodged between both incoming and oncoming lanes; it kept running, unaffected by whatever death it missed, unaffected by her shouting or my sparing action. It raced through farm fields, soon out-of-sight, soon nonexistent to us as it was before. And we wondered where it was headed.
- -
Weeks before our coyote-crossing, my friend had spotted an animal off along the roadside, lying in the dirt. She supposed it was a dog. I turned the car around and parked it. We walked back a quarter of a mile and found the poor thing. It certainly appeared dead. But not in the way that it was missing any limbs or had lost any obscene amount of fluids or any of its insides; it was stiff as stone and yet the belly squirmed; smaller, much more lively things were spawning, feeding, growing. “Give it a few days,” I muttered. “This planet’ll swallow it whole soon enough.” And we wondered where this dog had come from.
We notified local authorities and headed home.
