GLOBAL
WARMING
Oona's nails are pink as abalone.
But she won't shake hands. Everyone's holding
cell phones, happy as clams,
in clenched grins. I'm calling
my twin ear, she says, they say,
to hear myself. My onion,
my own Vidalia, Slim Him says,
my yellow butternut, my sweet
potato, he laughs, specializing in vegetable
speech. Oona's smile curls
like crazy. It's always fifty-three degrees
below, Slim says, geothermally. They
are sinking in snow, knee-deep. The hemlocks
wear hulky snow jackets. Groovy
says Oona, out of date, she's in duo-
folds. It's impossible, anymore,
to say what's natural. May as well
wear feathers and skin. She's been
plucked, pruned, and brushed herself.
Oona's got a mood on.
If anyone can be anyone, we must all
be one tree, she says. Her outfit
quivers. The white fox, clenching
its own tail in its own jaw.
--Rebecca Kaiser Gibson
Copyright © 2004 by Oberlin College. May not be
reproduced without permission.
TO HELP THE MONKEY CROSS THE RIVER,
which he must
cross, by swimming, for fruit and nuts,
to help him
I sit, with my rifle, on a platform
high in a tree, same side of the river
as the hungry monkey. How does this assist
him? When he swims for it
I look first up river: predators move faster with
the current than against it.
If a crocodile is aimed from up river to eat the
monkey
and an anaconda from down river burns
with the same ambition, I do
the math, algebra, angles, rate-of-monkey,
croc and snake-speed, and if, if
it looks like the anaconda or the croc
will reach the monkey
before he attains the river's far bank,
I raise my rifle and fire
one, two, three, even four times, into the river
just behind the monkey
to hurry him up a little.
Shoot the snake, the crocodile?
They're just doing their jobs,
but the monkey, the monkey
has little hands, like a child's
and the smart ones, in a cage, can be taught to smile.
--Thomas Lux
Copyright © 2004 by Oberlin College. May not be
reproduced without permission.
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