On Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution by Nnadi Samuel
30 lines
Issue 1 (Winter, February 2023)
The backbone attains hierarchy, calls human
its rarest prototype. raw flesh mold of matter:
metonym for brawn gone erect—the way we put friction to use.
from the atlas, you map out humanoids godding Asia:
all muscle swift & limb-light—sky-diving their way into canary objects.
the backflips, met by a whopping sleight of hand: skilled for this labour.
palm, splayfooted in sheer divinity of talons & claw.
elbow, in awful exchange with the modicum of breeze.
It's my first time witnessing entellus roam, undomesticated.
you: akin to howls. our mouth, brutal in this shy minute.
I attest to making a career off Charles Darwin's theory of evolution,
to the urge of parodying apes—
the way the textbook tells me anthropoids are
blessed with noise, as we are with silence
—the way I kept mute all through the
knowledge of knowing you ran a grocery store,
adjacent to a wildlife department I shuttled on goat-skined sneakers.
as you crush the boiled persimmon,
while I hang around, aimless—as a fruit cajoling the arm.
nature disciplines me into the longitude of a hand—outstretched, knifing the heat.
thick yellowish resin, ringing the purlicue of sworded thumb.
Human: the four-limbed aggressor of the food chain.
Being: the state of existence—a call to space, the way an orangutan seeks a tree.
my animal instinct piques at what becomes of us,
in this endless pilgrimage into the oddities of life—as night blurs into day.
you lacing & relacing your heartbeat.
the pheromones we secrete, orbiting our loins,
by which I mean my instinct don't lie when I say 'hunger is a call to both hands.'
I have been meaning to tell you:
I'm desperate for a hug.