Salamander Dream – Tyler Robert Sheldon

 

After a lithograph by Kat Lowe

 

Kat coats metal with thick black ink,

then takes paper and plates to press;

she rolls them under blankets meant

to swaddle, not smother. On paper,

she smiles atop a giant god-lizard,

perches high on its tight back

of feathery gills. The beast drives

hard through etched dry leaves,

trees and road-dust bending,

bowing, blowing away.

 

Sheldon_Tyler_Author_PhotoTyler Robert Sheldon is a Pushcart Prize nominee and the author of First Breaths of Arrival (Oil Hill Press, 2016), and the forthcoming Traumas (Yellow Flag Press, 2017). His poetry, fiction, and reviews have appeared in Quiddity International Literary Journal, The Midwest Quarterly, The Los Angeles Review, Coal City Review, The Prairie Journal of Canadian Literature, The Dos Passos Review, Entropy Magazine, The Big Nasty Press, and other venues. He holds a BA and an MA in English from Emporia State University, and is an MFA candidate at McNeese State University. View his work at tyrsheldon.wixsite.com/trspoetry.

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Taxonomy – Caitlin Johnson

 

Domain: Eukaryota

It’s not just the nucleus:

it’s the membrane-envelope

keeping us from oozing out;

it’s the matriarchal mitochondria

tracing us back before even Eve.

 

Kingdom: Animalia

Sometimes we forget

that we are animals, too-

we love to expunge

the evidence.

 

Phylum: Chordata

Musculature is not enough.

We need to grow a fucking backbone,

prove ourselves capable of contortions.

 

Class: Mammalia

We reject the reptilian brain.

We reject the scaled skin.

We reject the gills.

 

We demand the milk.

 

Order: Primates

Little fingers, little tails.

Eyes that seem to know.

& we hide in the trees.

 

Family: Hominidae

& what is so great

about the Great Apes?

The bonobos, the gorillas, the chimpanzees – sure.

But then comes the fourth.

 

Genus: Homo

Struggling to become upright/upstanding/upheavers.

Striding into the scrum.

Leaving antiquity, entering the man-made universe.

 

Species: H. sapiens

It’s not enough to conquer.

We must humiliate, as well:

subjugate, colonize, destroy.

The natural world?

No. The human one.

 

cj-bio-picCaitlin Johnson holds a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Lesley University. Her work has appeared in Carcinogenic Poetry, Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, Narrative Northeast, Pembroke Magazine, Vagina: The Zine, and Wild Quarterly, among other outlets. A chapbook, Boomerang Girl, was published in 2015 by Tiger’s Eye Press, and a full-length collection, Gods in the Wilderness, was published in 2016 by Pink.Girl.Ink. Press.