Ellen Welcker

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The Politeness Banana

Who knows where it began but let’s say
it was with a dream of apocalypse
in which I had two more things I had to print off
before I felt I could conceivably join
the fires that raged about me. Buildings melted.
Cement dust clogged pores and lungs.
Desperate people clung desperately
to what they hoped might be
useful in another life. I thought of the baby
sick day and night and holding tight
to a spoon she had not yet learned to sip
from. Tether or talisman? I pushed buttons
and turned off and on my printer.

At this moment, the politeness banana
was a finger on a hand, not yet
or perhaps already on the shelf at Synka’s
who gets them in once a week.
Once we learned this, it made more sense.
How we could find bananas, organic
and conventional, from a world away
but zero local bananas, even though
they were celebrated and beloved
and rightly so, as our behavior surrounding
the politeness banana would eventually
demonstrate. From the hand, the baby
ate three fingers, as we ebbed and flowed
from porch to porch, following the sun
or the shade at bequest of our personal
biomes. It was good to see her eat
and made us glad as only a glad baby can.
The grownups split the other two,
but somehow there was one left:
“You take it—” “no you—” “please, you—”

When we arrived, bedraggled,
Braxton Hicks’d, flat-tired, bent as rebar,
greyed, and plain tired, the baby
covered in sesame seeds like a human
pasteli, the banana bruised, battered,
hot, and smelling sweetly of the dream,
not the apocalypse dream, but the other
dream—the dream of which we eachly,
privately, publicly, everywhere now hardly
dare to but must find a way to speak:
the dream of that other world, the tether
and the talisman, the dream, the dream,
the dream! I gave it a little jiggle.

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Microplasticene

Into the mouth of the blobfish
And out of the eye of the liger
Into the lung of the domestic canary
And out of the anus of the common wombat
Into the proboscis of the Atlas moth
And out of the blowhole of the grey whale
Into the thorax of the gnat
And out of the nostril of the mountain gorilla
Into the stomach of the earthworm
And out of the immune system of the ostrich
Into the underwings of the pine beetle
And out of the yolk-sac of the lake sturgeon
Into the liver of the boa constrictor
And out of the slobber of the pittie
And into the cells, every single cell, of the living

Into the veins of the western diamondback rattlesnake
And out of the pores of the wind-blasted sanderling
Into the ear of the earwig
And out of the pouch of the kangaroo
Into the smidge of the midge
And out of the aperture of the nautilus
Into the folds of the naked mole rat
And out of the inner tube of the nematode
Into the spiraled horn of the nyala
And out of the hollow bone of the albatross
Into the feathered gills of the axolotl
Out of the gall bladder of the honey badger 
Into the hump of the Bactrian camel
Out of the ass of the largemouth bass
Into the diphthong of the dugong
And out of the California condor’s DDT-thinned egg.

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Ass Poetica

When I ride past trees in their zenith
I point and shout ZENITH

Having grown up with brown birds, now red birds
Amaze me, how they camouflage in a green tree

Daily I wave to what waves at me, a plastic bag
Plasticking in the canopy, wholeheartedly

I am a maximalist when it comes to work
Picking my battles I’ve chosen “all”

Spend my time carefully
Recklessly, depending

An invasive among invasives
You might say,

Or a carbon conservator, late in the game
Doing little, doing nothing well

The goats take a bite here, a bite there
I bring a book and a folding chair

One of the best things is when people see us
In the trees and shout DONKEYS

Of course I am imagining how
To look not how long it will take

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Caveat

I do not have a single thing to say about asparagus.
I don’t know what asparagus is, and I don’t care.
Asparagus has probably existed on the planet for fifty million years.
It probably has no vestigial organs.
It has no feelings.
It gets high on dust motes, sparkling in summer sunlight.
It is opposed to the language of “clean eating.”
For asparagus understands the thin line between scarcity and plenty.
Thin as stalks. Lines like rows. To hoard or not to hoard. Asparagus
Does not respond to bullshit. Manure, however,
Is another story. Asparagus wields its tenderness tenderly.
There is no other way to say it. Which tells you something
About softness. And growth.
Asparagus is not afraid of winter. Asparagus
Experiences the world as time-lapse abundance.
Asparagus is made of imagination, microplastics, and yellow #5.
The memory of asparagus is interchangeable with its future.
It is physiologically unable to look at the moon.
When asparagus pricks its ears, it is listening for the whispers of feathers, and gods.
Asparagus will adapt to a strong wind.
It doesn’t believe “nature is constantly surprising us.”
For asparagus is, even now, observing the age of the Anthropocene.
Some say Empire will overcome it.
The ancestors of asparagus stem from four continents.
That’s an asparagus double-entendre.
Over centuries we have carried it, cradled in our bellies.
What asparagus wants is simple.
The peace-loving asparagus wants something so simple, it would make you cry.
Of course, you would say. And you would do anything to make it happen.
Anything. Or you would really feel this way, for a little while.
Then the feeling would pass, or would become uncomfortable.
This is why I am forced—no, compelled—
to throw up my hands in despair. To say I
know absolutely nothing
about asparagus.

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Banner Art:
Image by Filmbetrachter, Pixabay, 2019