Saturday 17 April 2010

Better than Rhinos!

Me: So what should I write about?
Wanda: Hippos!
Kamili: Cheese!
Karly: Milking hippos for their cheese!


Milking the Behemoths.
You have to get right in there, right under there.
Wear gloves, a rubber facemask. Pull hard, like
you would on a raincoat stuck in a car door.

Experts-- and there are experts-- recommend
you go at night, dressed as some sort of parasitic bird.
(this works better on rhinosceroses, but still a damn site better
than the crocodile suits we tried first)

It helps to be able to breathe in mud,
to be impervious to crushing weights on your chest,
to think only of the profit in certain parts of New England
or the Pacific Northwest where this will be the hot new thing,
to never, as you're slid between sweating, grunting beasts
think "there has to be a better way."

3 comments:

liralen said...

Me: So what should I write about?
Wanda: Hippos!
Kamili: Cheese!
Karly: Milking hippos for their cheese!



stop hanging out with 'wacky' girls.
okay to be fair I didn't even read the poem.
but that should only further my point.

graham said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said...

hello, I like this poem. The Pacific Northwest hot new thing line, didn't grab me as much as the rest of the poem. But the rest of the poem grabbed me and shook as if I were a baby that wouldn't stop crying and it was a teenage mother unable to cope with what her life had become.