My Baby Plays with Noah’s Ark

By Dorsey Craft

Get in the boat! I yell, voicing the purple, 
quilted Noah, because this scene never
 
has enough urgency: placid pairs 
of swans and aardvarks meekly gliding
 
up the ramp—We’re the last of our species, 
so what? It’s unbelievable, the amount 

of toymakers inspired by divinely 
designed apocalypse, the Lord wiping 

his hand across the white board 
of creation. My baby has four Noahs:

two books, his tiny travel ark, plus 
a plush with life-size squirrels. 

I like to make the waves to smack 
against the bow, the doves skitter  

in tornado cones as the rhinos 
gore chinchillas, barrel to the dry 

compartments up top. I no longer 
believe in orderly fashion, 

double-file lines, anything other 
than animal fury at annihilation. My son
 
pincers a zebra above his head 
like a sacrifice. He laughs like violet
 
lilting to indigo, like rain that torrents, 
a reveille for the birth of the world. 

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Dorsey Craft is the author of Plunder (Bauhan Publishing 2020), winner of the May Sarton NH Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Blackbird, Cincinnati Review, Copper Nickel, Pleiades, Poetry Northwest, and elsewhere. She currently serves as Assistant Poetry Editor of Agni and teaches creative writing at University of North Florida.

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