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.
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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“Anything other than animal fury at annihilation” = 👌🏻👌🏻👌🏻
Brilliant. Finally got to reading this - I knew I would love it, but love it even more than I anticipated.