cross the isthmus in time.
i’ve uncorked the bottleneck for bottomless brunch & they’ve declined
the dashing—limbs torpedoed moments prior to repose—while i stroll away on the strand.
⠀⠀⠀
i deliver news of their cameo to the old man reading sugar-free recipes in the aarp
amid a consensus that the incumbent could be throttled from his destination
in the canopy, at his rate of jetsetting from foliage to sea.
mom & slowbie lock, grip, crawl.
let us admire their reach—
⠀⠀⠀
one limb buckles & in the flesh,
as the whole invariably chooses part, in this case, the humerus, to adduct;
the architecture of torso buttressed against fresh leaves, reflecting the passion
of me in a malaise of damp & spirited from the fermenter’s gut, near the planet’s widest seam;
now & again the clouds huddle & we see them clearer than against the gray & comb in
pomade of a light sea breeze, baby arches his gangly stem of the mammalian tree,
gazes over the crown at you, your pose supine & placenta—
your heart pounding one whole lifetime, sloth.
⠀⠀⠀
half a billion years ago, i must’ve ruptured their continent: seen inklings of basaltic volcanism—
xenarthrans braced their vertebrae & spawned to mouth what the raptors jettisoned—
⠀⠀⠀
we spent our panamanian days subsisting in our den; turkey vultures hoover with news of the
dead to whom we’d give kingdom & order, though they aren’t the wiser:
⠀⠀⠀
they come so slovenly into our winter’s calm;
eyes unbuckling the galaxy,
as a whole day drifts,
albeit slowly;
rapturous & the new day dewy.
Zixiang Zhang has poems published in Cathexis Northwest, Consilience, Pedestal, The Nature of Our Times, Pensive, Magpie Zine, and others. He holds an undergraduate degree in geology from Stanford University and masters degrees from UC Berkeley and the American Museum of Natural History. Once, he published research on brachiopod evolution in the journal Paleobiology. Now, he teaches Earth science in NYC and enjoys dry gardening, erging, sunbathing, and sundry. He may be active @zzverse.