Volume 3 Issue 1: Origins
Dinosaur Pee
I. the water on my nightstand is stale
its costume so transient the taste dies after seconds
joins the roiling masses of stomach acid
where things deliquesce, despite everything—
all the reasons not to.
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II. we like to pump water older than our Sun with little bubbles
milk mineralized time from organism-infested rapids
tolerant ancient molecules packaged in bulk at your local Costco, $3-4 a pack.
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III. water makes a waltz of transformation
inching gradually through cosmic ballrooms
static in glacier-carved limestone chronologically layered in red red eons
there are umpteen revolutions recorded by the geologic time scale
is the water cycle really a circle?
conversely, is the destruction of the past comparable with the construction of a future?
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Is our dance almost finished, or do we still have a long ways to go?
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Pelican-Throated in a Starving World
Corner of the street,
splinter-hearted girls line up in drugstores for
White Rabbit milk candy and
ginger lozenges golden to
nurse tired coughs and—
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on my birthday in June
I took fistfuls of your pelican-throat to extract
sardines stomaching shredded plastic bags,
red printed smiley faces, half-digested.
Well I told you to stop, didn’t I? Now
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look at you.
You always had a big mouth;
too big for this world, we joked and
who’s laughing now because
now your feathers are rainbow-anointed, too
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good for this world, we lamented.
You hungered to taste life raw,
carry us under your tongue like
peppermint to protect.
You forgot your midyear exams
to write a bad poem about
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love and the universe.
In childhood you teethed on a sand dollar;
your first uncooperative cookie.
You came to know disappointment
pleading with the masses and you
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couldn’t believe no one cared
if the Amazon was burning or the ocean pH was
dropping no one cared.
It’s a starving world, I said. I tried to prime you for
disappointment or you’d sprout wax wings I mean
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you don’t think we cry too, pelican-throated?
I mean, maybe we starve in silence.