Guano on my tan-colored soles and bamboo hats for seal spotting figments.
My knees are bone marrow deep on the blocks of Chinatown,
slid my hands with dirt as I bury the rib shells and weep.
Holding my Mr. Peacock yard stick that I mistook for a toy
and spouting nonsense on death since youth woes are
filled to the verge with giraffe-shaped popsicles and green beetles.
If I could trade one, perhaps four, of my hours for the shell-backed reptile I will forever call Sir,
through the flow of brown lens we both share and a shell of material we call a body,
my eyes would adapt underwater, and Sir would learn to sing.
Why must the sea dog have a soul by the vivid oceans but no wise man be kind enough to mourn
when the last ice melts, and no human can go back to the pod of delusion.
Creatures born with soft tissue, a nucleus, a heart, gazed by the colossal brain club,
signed with privilege and held among a quill pen avulsed from crow feathers that
the winners stigmatize as harbingers of death on tombstones.
I’ll fill the patch of grime and call Sir for the times I see the plastron of another.
Grieve the heartbeat of the seal used for skin, sewn onto waterproof gloves.
Wishes made only by the callous with meat cleavers and liquid potpourri for comfort.
—
Vivian Xeung is a senior in high school who has a passion for animal health and has future plans of working in animal husbandry and other aspects of the environment. She is a newcomer in poetry, who is seeking to explore language without rhyme and instead through raw expression of passion.
