Bread and Bread

Photo by Fredrik Öhlander on Unsplash If you were a snowflake— your mother a glacier, your arms branched and reaching— the photos would melt you.  The blast-orange light revealing a thrown-back head, flames marching along an IV tube, blaze branched, arm reaching. You would throw your cold body on the fire, turn to steam. You would mourn the loss, condemn the evil. But you are a fist of coal— not hard enough to become a diamond,  you are disappointment in the toe  of a bad child's Christmas stocking. And so you file the photos between Guilt and Luck in your dewey decimal mind.  Your mother was a librarian, your father an engineer. Their shared currency was worry. So when you wonder if you are dying, if your CBC is tea leaves, if animals can smell cancer,  is this self-love or -hatred?  Ego is a red herring, a lavender menace. And when you thought, But they're probably not even sick, they were probably in the hospital because of the war,  you crowned th...

The zookeeper’s bathroom becomes a nest: dirt and twigs from sink to toilet, the bathtub a makeshift pond. The shoebill is part cartoon: beady eyes and a loafer for a beak. The zookeeper’s wife becomes a zookeeper, dropping a slice of stale bread into the bird’s smile.  The zoo tower becomes lookout and barricade. A black gun as long as three men points at the sky, reminding airplanes that they are not birds, or that they are: as easy to down as a duck. The ears of giraffes and antelopes, built to hear lion paws on leaves, hold the sounds of bombs and flak guns. Their bodies tell them to run, but the cage bars say otherwise.  Two hippos, a black rhino, a sea elephant, and eight land elephants become meat. People who thought the worst part of their job would be sweeping shit now eat their charges. Now there is more waste than ever to shovel. Now there are not enough dust pans in the world. Now the world becomes a dust pan. Now they must admit: tenderized crocodile tails taste l...