Catalogue of North American mammals with drawings and proof plates, c. 1856
Courtesy of the Biodiversity Heritage Library

So then he talks to me for a second.
Like a torn check littered across brick.
       [Kinda liminal but I like it.]
         Splotch on the sidewalk, mucosal,
      pallid yellow. The city’s
     organ—bowel-like, intestinal.
   We deplete the cavities. Like
   the splayed arms of a Norway
Maple’s helicopter
  seeds. A hydrocolloid gel pad.
  Mice can produce
  ultrasonic vocalization,
    which scientists describe as
“chirping,” a kind of laughter.
    [You should steal the hair.]
      No I mean the c-h. Kick up
        the alley’s dried skin, gravel
          chalk, scrape the side of my
          rubber shoes. As mice age,
the tendency to chirp declines.
        A blister, shorn fresh: two-
dimensional plate, brooding red.

 

Abbigail Baldys


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