Animals Are Passing From Our Lives by Philip Levine

Animals Are Passing From Our Lives
Philip Levine

It’s wonderful how I jog
on four honed-down ivory toes
my massive buttocks slipping
like oiled parts with each light step.

I’m to market. I can smell
the sour, grooved block, I can smell
the blade that opens the hole
and the pudgy white fingers

that shake out the intestines
like a hankie. In my dreams
the snouts drool on the marble,
suffering children, suffering flies,

suffering the consumers
who won’t meet their steady eyes
for fear they could see. The boy
who drives me along believes

that any moment I’ll fall
on my side and drum my toes
like a typewriter or squeal
and shit like a new housewife

discovering television,
or that I’ll turn like a beast
cleverly to hook his teeth
with my teeth. No. Not this pig.

MARGINALIA

My sister and I found new ways to entertain ourselves in Toy Kingdom, a store full of, well, toys. We took it upon ourselves to peruse every aisle, every nook and corner of the place, until our hearts finally found rest in King Kong, to whom whose return to the land of Everyman became the source of movie buzz as of late.

We also took the liberty of going through different fairy tale headbands in the department store. Strangely we found it wanting – they didn’t have wings and pixie skirts! That really made us cry. I mean, c’mon. If you’re going to spread the love at all – haven’t they felt that there’s also a need for waspy wings and pixie skirts and glitter dust and ballerina shoes and a battery-operated wand?!

Well, it sucks to be you, SM. Oh wait, you’re not even called SM now! You’re not a bold star with a two-syllable name anymore! You’re not an Inez, nor a Gardo! They’ve christened you! You’re now SM Supermall. Hooray to your parents – for being megalomaniac assholes. Commercialism sucks monster dicks.

And now, to end this consumer rant.