One Poem by Elizabeth Mercurio

 

The Most Important Animal

 

In the beginning Adam named himself 

the most important animal, 

in all the world— 

and now the earth tears apart 

broken by Adam’s great greed, 

Fires— 

Floods— 

Storms— 

& Wars— 

His lust cannot be stopped, 

driving us all too early into dark boxes. 

Adam’s hierarchy firmly established 

In the beginning 

in boardrooms, 

full of white men. 

So much money in the bank, 

they can buy and sell us all. 

Someday we will recapture the time 

Before— 

Before they named us, told us our place, 

told us who we had to be. 

The pendulum swings, 

the clock keeps ticking 

& new animals will be born, 

Wild, with no names, lightly listening, 

suddenly able to see in the dark, 

like the fast-growing wildflowers 

just after the fire 

luminescent, 

tougher than time 

& ready to invent a universe—

Elizabeth Mercurio is the author of the chapbooks Doll and Words in a Night Jar. She earned an MFA from The Solstice Low-Residency Program. Her work has appeared in Lily Poetry Review, Ample Remains, The Wild Word, Thimble Magazine, Vox Populi, and elsewhere. She is a Pushcart and best of the net nominated poet and was named a finalist in the Cordella Press Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Prize and the Two Sylvias Press Wilder Poetry Prize.