Blind babies smile on the same
schedule as those with sight.
Consumers will pay more
for leather made from the skin
of an animal never bitten by mosquitoes.
Either the mute child spoke
in full sentences alone in the dark
or the monitors picked up ghosts
of pelicans streaming over the bridge.
A solitary locust may seem far
removed from a depressed person.
Mice are the second most successful
mammal. A monkey on board
a Jupiter AM-18 rocket is a hero.
Miss Baker. A monkey in a cage
is a number. In the wild,
the only way to separate a monkey
from her infant is to kill her.
In this next experiment, your child
is kidnapped and broadcast
back to you on a wide, flat screen,
an orphan crying himself to sleep in the dirt.
#433 hangs from her mother’s tit
while one cage over her twin #434
throws his body against the bright
steel walls of his enclosure.
from Little StrangerFind it in the library
Copyright © 2013 Lisa Olstein
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc.
on behalf of Copper Canyon Press.