163 Animal poems

Gram of mania, animated pepper, shadow-monger dressed in panic, monitor of  ghostly footfalls, it concentrates in its essential tic the frog leg dropped into oil and the human shock at the verge. If  it would stop and let me look, I might imagine the tropic where it hangs in a hammock between two popsicle sticks admiring the iguana’s stealth, but it does not stop. Hawk- dodger, crow-pretzel, gallows’ twitch. Spider-shark. Porter of  readiness, miller of  the steady shudder, peripatetic rectitude, run by the power of   the sunlit rock, it fortifies Darwin and the idea of   being late and the missed appointment. With its blue tail, it reminds us: it will go on. It will not stop.

If you're one of seven Downfalls, up in your kingdom Of mulberry leaves, there are men Betting you aren't worth a bullet, That your skin won't tan into a good Wallet. As if drugged in the womb & limboed in a honeyed languor, By the time you open your eyes A thousand species have lived & died. Born on a Sunday Morning, with old-world algae In your long hair, a goodness Disguised your two-toed claws Bright as flensing knives. In this Upside-down haven, you're reincarnated As a fallen angel trying to go home.

In the Metro Toronto Zoo

Questions for a zoologist starting with anatomy concluding with love: Is a turtle’s skin loaned? True or false: weight of his shell is lighter than the light of drums. What is the under-shell and is it tough as a mangrove? Can he see through his shell-box? Can he see out the rear to this sea of ours? Does he exist in the order of things? How does life begin, when does it end and is that good or evil? Yellow margin over a cuttlebone, domed carapace is it a lonely world of sow bugs, cutworms, and God?

1 Nose only above water; an hour in the ice melt; paw in a beaver trap, northern leaping through— the outlet sieving, setter- retriever staked to her trip, The stake of her young life run to nose level. Farmers adjacent to the lake call ’round for the owner; at least they call around, and a man in a pickup pulls her out, her crushed paw limp in the blazing sun. Shivering on our pantry floor, wrapped in a snowsuit, I see her dam the clamped paw staked to the sleeve, licking for breaks, a light trickle of blood spilling from a torn nail. 2 Next spring she will tramp down our wire, stamp on six goslings, swim for teal, run down blackbirds, drag deer bones in our garden. She limps on the compost pile, shakes at the vet, fishes under makeshift docks, ferrets out mink, frog, green snake, any animal scrimmage without stakes: listen to her spayed name— warned, thwarted, disregarded, beautiful— last of her line.

Satao, Kenya’s last great tusker, was poached in 2014 Cowards, let us sing in dead Elmolo how the elephants have died. We thank the cavemen, that they drew them, that zoologists described them, for the photos of them herding which the tourists left behind, for who would ever, fools, believe us? Teeth from heaven to the ground!? I stretch my arm out like a trunk to palm the graveyard of its cranium; it’s how, I hear, they mourned. The brain within worked tools and language. I have none: a useless pen (it’s only good for drafting elegies) and even then, no words. We once had tuskers. Tell the birds!

I love when out of nowhere I love when out of nowhere my cat jumps on me and my body isn’t even surprised. Me who wants to be surprised by everything like a dandelion like a bottle cap cricket cricket. I keep waiting for the god under the anthill to speak up. I keep waiting for the part of the myth where everyone turns into a different bird or the reeds start talking or horses come out of the ocean in their parliamentary regalia and cities grow from their hoofprints. I keep waiting for the bugle and the jackal-headed god to weigh my heart across the river. All this daylight in just a few moments pours itself into darkness. More and more I’m satisfied with partial explanations like a fly with one wing, walking.

A giraffe presented its head to me, tilting it sideways, reaching out its long gray tongue. I gave it my wheat cracker while small drops of rain pounded us both.  Lightning cracked open the sky.  Zebras zipped across the field. It was springtime in Michigan.  I watched the giraffe shuffle itself backwards, toward the herd, its bone- and rust-colored fur beading with water.  The entire mix of animals stood away from the trees.  A lone emu shook its round body hard and squawked.  It ran along the fence line, jerking open its wings. Perhaps it was trying to shake away the burden of water or indulging an urge to fly.  I can’t know. I have no idea what about their lives these animals love or abhor.  They are captured or born here for us, and we come.  It’s true.  This is my favorite field.

When you hear me singing you get the rifle down and the flashlight, aiming for my brain, but you always miss and when you set out the poison I piss on it to warn the others. You think:That one’s too clever, she’s dangerous,

I walked along Rue du Faubourg du Temple on the way to Belleville and I stopped at a shop selling rat poison. To my astonishment and my amusement they had a window full of stuffed rats, including four small rats standing round a table, playing cards. I liked that very much. Paris was full of weird turnarounds, it seemed — poisoning and elevating the rats to art at the same time. I nearly went in and asked how much the four rats and the tiny table would cost, but I remembered I’d be going back to Ireland pretty soon, and the people at airport security might not see the joke. It was not the first time I’d seen rat poison on sale here. Paris seemed to have a problem with rats. Someone I’d met for lunch recently had said she’d seen them running around the Métro platform when she was coming home once around midnight. I remembered a rat had made a dramatic appearance in one of Baudelaire’s little poems in prose. A rich boy had lost interest in his expensive toy because he’d seen a poor boy poking a rat in an improvised cage. I’m pretty sure that wasn’t an invention on Baudelaire’s part — lots of poor parents probably thought of giving their children (or at least, their sons) rats as pets. Hadn’t I had a pet mouse myself? The rich boy who’d seen the rat certainly was delighted at the idea of having the creature as a pet. Many years ago a friend of mine who worked as a chef gave me his original copy of Larousse Gastronomique— an edition first published in the 1920s or 30s. In there, I think, was a recipe called Cassoulet de Grand Souris. This was basically rat meat given the coq au vin or boeuf bourguignon treatment, i.e. cooked in red wine with mushrooms and tiny onions. I can’t remember which top Parisian restaurant introduced the dish onto their menu during the Siege of Paris in 1870–71, but apparently it proved very popular. It made sense too, as the Siege lasted for more than four months, and no meat was getting in, while rats were plentiful, then as now. I seem to recall the menus of the time sometimes also included rat salami, and a rat sauce called Sauce Robert. It’s no use looking in a current edition of Larousse as the book has been cleaned up — all mention of rats have been removed. I had some experience of rats when I was a child in Donegal. 
I commonly saw water rats swimming in the stream or small river that flowed behind my primary school. The house I grew up in had rats under the floorboards. I used to love spending time under the stairs, and sometimes the rats would come in through a hole in the back. I don’t remember ever having been afraid of them but I never touched them or wanted them to walk on top of me. And I certainly never thought of capturing one and making it my pet. My little pink-eyed albino mouse was rodent enough for me, and even that was a trial for my mother.