Rachel DeWoskin
anthrosphere
who brought toxic mollusks, boat or sneaker, human, vegetation,
listen —cannibal snail, gravel, carbon, gibbon, bedlam— listen
to each sweet felicitation, to construction, our consumption. gobble, feast,
eat after asking any of the billion chickens toppling over its giant breast
how we make what’s most delicious to us, ask the numbered, patterned cats, sleek
now past sense, sleek toward extinct, toward prowling cities, predators. one week
is a lifetime for each chicken we invented. ask an ocean, rolled into a marble
on the scientist’s image: map of small blue trouble
{all the water covering earth’s surface is thinner than the skin
of an apple} ask an apple, almond, lemon, olive, bouquet of kale
ask anthro how it came to cover bio, fast slap, mat, plastic fat fail.
auditorium, kolktata’s la martiniere school for boys, curious
children fret about extinction. one asks, furious,
why grownups lie, asks: why are kids the ones
you’re asking for solutions?
after each sheepish answer, boys shy as deer approach the stage, boys formal
in their navy blazers, bravely handing scientists flowers, such as will
be strewn upon us soon. we’ll wilt, too. all that used to be
wild we’ve coaxed into delicious, ours, enormous, too hot? we
chill, too cold? heat up. too far we jet across, unpassable blast
with dynamite so glittering our highways ribbon, silver tons of fish
float up into our open mouths. what’s going to moor us back
to a devoured earth, so much sweet water brackish, ask
fracked oil, ask detritus, whales, glaciers we are melting, melting into--
these days i keep falling
i keep falling. slipped on the rocks in a river and caught
my left pinky, landing, tore bone away {avulsion}, thought
it would heal, was wrong, did not. i am not distraught
though, change is falling, change this year has taught
me: kick harder in sleep, remember falling may prepare
us to fall harder, faster, be broken/okay/i won’t despair--
blading uphill, i slipped and cracked a rib right where
the incline sharpened, errant twig or seed pod there
lodged in my wheel, twisted, flipped me over, numb
with shock. i’m not distraught. this fight is different from
the one i used to have with my body. i’ve become
myself descending, protective of what i opposed, some
version i am, one i cannot save, someone who
falls through layers of time i climb, too--
--
Rachel DeWoskin is the author of Two Menus: Poems (The University of Chicago Press, 2020); Banshee (Dottir Press, 2019); Someday We Will Fly (Penguin, 2019); Blind (Penguin, 2014); Big Girl Small (FSG, 2011); Repeat After Me (The Overlook Press, 2009); and Foreign Babes in Beijing (WW Norton, 2005). She is an Associate Professor of Practice in the Arts at the University of Chicago, and an affiliated faculty member of the Centers for East Asian Studies and Jewish Studies.