Emily Magnus's Reviews > Goldenrod: Poems

Easy lil morning read of poems. Nothing earth shattering. Some I snapped pics of to remind me and look back on later and some I skimmed on through. It was more cynical than I thought it would be but such is life. Notes on divorce, children, policies, life etc

POTB:

Animals

The president called undocumented immigrants animals, and in the nature documentary I watched this morning with my kids, after our Saturday pancakes, the white fairy tern doesn't build a nest but lays her single speckled egg in the crook of a branch or a tree knot. It looks precarious there because it is. And while she's away, because even mothers must eat, another bird swoops in and pecks it, sips some of what now won't become. The tern returns and knows something isn't right--the egg crumpled, the red slick and saplike running down the tree-but her instinct is so strong, she sits. Just sits on the broken egg. I have been this bird.
We have been animals all our lives, with our spines and warm blood, our milky tits and fine layers of fur. Our live births, too, if we're lucky. But what animal wrenches a screaming baby from his mother?
Do we know anymore what it is to be human?
I've stopped knowing what it is to be human.