Taxidermy Falkland Islands Wolf in the Animal Attic
Charles Darwin stepped off the HMS Beagle
and said you will soon go extinct, little wolf.
You are too trusting
and you have not learned how to be afraid.
And you skink-plaited between his legs
and ate from his evolutionist hands—
licked at his scientist fingers.
Learn from ours, said Darwin. Our wolves
bristle like a thousand thousand razors
in the shape of a predator.
They know what to fear. Here
you eat from the one hand while the other
holds a knife.
All the better to kill you with.
Now glass where there should be eyes.
Teeth with no bite. I want you
to come back to life
because I am alone too, and have also learned
how to be afraid. I would never kill you.
Come and sit on my lap, your warmth
rising taxidermy dust around us
like a cloud made of skin.
Come and eat from my hand.
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Jenny Craig weight loss poster by Countdown Central
Sally, smiling with her subcutaneous-white teeth,
looks very thin now.
She wears a red viscose top from Farmers
and bares SmileDirect teeth
like in a desert full of yellow bones
Sally is a spine bleached by the sun.
Beautiful Sally.
I heard we evolved from apes to homosapiens
because we started taking magic mushrooms
and found God.
My brain, your brain, Sally’s brain,
all grey wet walnuts driving our meat machines
as we shrink and grow and shrink and grow
and waste our time counting almonds
and halving stock cubes and slicing cucumbers
and pretending they taste like chips.
Just eat some chips, Sally.
You and your magic brain and desert teeth—
hair a golden helmet, plate held like a god’s attribute,
like hungry Minerva
like an ancient statue slowly shrinking as the desert winds
of seashells and low-cal rice cakes
blow all about you.
Sally—the lone and level sands
stretch far away. Across the distance you watch me
like the Mona Lisa, like a predator or a carnivore—
like something hungry.