You think in the animal kingdom
there’s no waste
cause you’re nice and shun anthropomorphism but actually there’s a lot
I mean you’re nice and don’t want to imbue empty human qualities onto black eyes but actually there’s a lot
If you don’t believe me,
get out of the city
and look in the dirt,
dig a little bit with your claws,
stand in what you have dug,
and empty your pockets
You think there’s no waste in nature but dams
There’re more severe and damaging forms of waste
wherever meerkats live
In the Kalahari
the waste’s painful
they don’t waste resources
they waste their own genes,
out of jealousy,
they waste their own ways
and looks; their selves
They live in matriarchies
impossible to describe unsexistly
cause these moms are so mean
and only to their own daughters
who wanna be moms
The shunning of the fertile
is biologically so wasteful, but also mean
– I mean the shunning until you are dead –
You can see the hurt in the still and stiff
pose of the excommunicated female
who knows she’ll die of clanlessness
her black eyes darting dark and sharp in the heat
her cowered “praying” arms limp and matte
her fur by her ears scruffy and clumped
from the stress and from the pain
and it is all she can do to pivot
while her blind and pink young feet below her
are blind and pink
Her mother discovers them and brings them up
just after she’s roasted in the sun
then her mother has further daughters
and those daughters further daughters
How long can this go on
Forever
Actually it’s true
most animals eat everything up
Most leave only the inedible parts:
the bones and the teeth
sometimes gnawed on later
by smaller animals or animals
who have greater needs for their own teeth
or bones
Then the animals go to sleep
and rear their young,
roughly
and when it looks cute to us,
cutely, and virally,
and it’s very penetrating
The cutest things I’ve ever seen,
I realize, I’ve never seen
I realize I want to put a loris on a piano
I think animals are cute
in an ancient way
Image credit: Mike Richardson and Sarah Winch