TRANSCRIPT

I’m Maggie Smith, and this is The Slowdown.

I have a soft spot for poems that center animals, and there are many such poems. I’m thinking about the horse in James Wright’s famous poem, “A Blessing.” I’m thinking about the poor dead goat in Brigit Pegeen Kelly’s poem “Song,” which might just be my favorite poem of all time. (It’s so hard to choose just one!)

I’m thinking about Laura Gilpin’s haunting poem “The Two-Headed Calf,” and William Stafford’s poem “Traveling Through the Dark,” with its famous dead doe on the side of the road. And I can’t forget David Baker’s many poems with birds in them, wrens and starlings and herons. “Neverending Birds,” which I’ve shared on this show, is also a favorite.

Look at us, building a little reading list of animal poems in this episode, in case you want to find them yourself. Think of it as a poetry scavenger hunt!

I’m definitely adding today’s poem to that list.

Love Song to the Alpacas of Solomon Lane
by Kenzie Allen

You know nothing of stars.
There is a low black river bordering the field,
and a sturdy little fence you arch across
with your precious skull and your ludicrous eyelashes
should a child approach with carrots or careless hands.
You don’t know the ocean, or the end of that road;
the bubbling cloud of ash thrown up by dirty bombs;
what a human can do to another human
or to anything else, really, that gets in its way;
the piles of glittering shards left over
from the jeweler’s perfect cut.
You don’t know the way they call us
gone,  don’t know life as illegal.
You’ve no concept of the delicacy of a vein,
which countries’ lost water sends alfalfa to your bin.
If there is a hum overhead, some cold flying spider
crowned in a tiny green light and a single, relentless eye—
you need nothing of coordinates, demographics,
the outline of a district or illusion of safety,
just shears at the right time, a firm hand, a soft voice,
carrots, someone on the other end of a shovel.
The dense shag of your shoulders won’t hold
the heat of this city. How many years until you are gone;
your pen a water feature in another speculative neighborhood
with houses all bricked in the French style
starting at only one-point-five million and
I look for you driving lonely the nights I come back to Texas
as though from here  is belonging.
Your jaws work idle, your little hooves muffle in dust.
Would that I could have lived happy in your oblivion,
not seen airplanes and mistaken them for comets,
not seen so much I learned to want or fear—
but teach me, sweet soft-lipped faces, sweet big dark eyes,
how to settle my restless legs beneath me,
to be quieted for what I can have.
Low on the horizon, that flickering light—
I know it’s not a supernova. A satellite will do.

"Love Song to the Alpacas of Solomon Lane” by Kenzie Allen from CLOUD MISSIVES © 2024 Kenzie Allen. Used by permission of Tin House, an imprint of Zando, LLC and the poet.