Zakia Henderson-Brown
Three Poems
Dolezal
A social construct
Only under pitch of night will spruce admit they envy earthworms
Their muscular mouths, complex perception, brilliant and flexible
Hearts. They bend their branches in almost-praise, dropping needles
That appear to the worms as deathtraps: cruel, minty stakes
From some peeved god. By the clarity of first light, their carcasses
Suggest an intimate arrangement between close friends, gone awry—
--
Braids fitted with beads argue the importance of parts to a whole,
Echoing a tinny drum with every shake of the head. Yes, yes!
The heads seem to say. Or no, no, no from another angle. In either case,
Extensions are only about $100. Bark-colored skin brushed on
As an armor. But to determine blackface, first examine the lips—
--
The wild is a playpen for deception: rotted weeds take on
The fragrance of begonia, the thin sheet of ice conceals
A vexed lake; quicksand where the marsh puckers. In the forest
Of labyrinthine hearts, a nervous system folds in on itself &
Nature’s students come across a desperate slithering: worms fattened
& slowed by spruce sap, or a way to enrich the soil.
anthropology for never
we evolve, textbooks claim
like a slow-moving wave
from dust particle
to many-limbed animal
capable of anything
but survival. what did i see
there in the hospital bed
as the last horns sounded
in my brother’s chest?
a sigh of relief maybe
though pain is supposed to be
native as air to living things.
no, i saw him
moving toward an ever
i could not imagine
*
did tyrannosauruses
dream us up? another species
waiting to be alive then
dead then microscoped
until the next creatures
have a go. perhaps there were
no dreams, only cypress,
carnage, sun. limb over limb
in dusty plains for endless acres
and the sky doesn’t mention
an ever, only now now
now. you can never know,
only look back and note
small changes: what did his body,
its immaculate frailty,
tell us about the future,
sixty years too soon?
*
i once read
metastases had brains
"anthropology for never" page two
soft agents of no survival,
roaming the flesh for food:
no relief, no reward, just
particles latching on
to whatever, honestly,
in pure carnage.
certainly, machines
lent my brother
comfort; maybe
they slowly entered
his dreams: cypress-green
lines drowsing or
dancing, a species of living thing
native to the wall plug.
oxy for pain, sun for
malaise; radiation and cocktails
for tumors—any book
should claim history
has always been palliative.