LESLEY JENIKE

Three Go to the Zoo

These cells are worthless still they saved my life.
They turn out at increasing rates offspring full
of DNA that say this face is my face. What a zoo.

You’d think I’d fall under the pressure of so many
nuclei clamoring at their bars, those chimps.
I’m privy suddenly to sex, to dumb lump banana

and orange breakfast blistering as they bang away.
I’m not one to talk. I’ve been used too.
I’ve been jilted, been on my back, genes gone

manic. But revolt is revolt however good the end.
Someone will die. Someone will be lost. Amelia
in her plane would say these same three things.

I smother my own caw. In the dark of the birdhouse
I lie down before the osprey and February flies in.
She opens my back to ice then in spring, disintegration.

No better than I was before, I’m the vanished
dodo, the last passenger pigeon down. To be
the only of a kind means diner counters, deeper

discounts, the window seat on an airplane. Look out
below, Unfathomable Trinity. Son, Pop, Ghost,
triangulate your mystery, triple your torture map.

East. East. All I want is to crash into the sun,
scramble the seasons till summer falls
then winters all over me. Heat in the mouth, I

swallow, I nightingale. Wanderlust is nothing
but a single engine parting the air like a curtain.
Three-Personed God, my selves will muddle through.