OUR PLACE IN IT ALL 

 

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Chicken nuggets 

          shaped like dinosaurs

score goose for Jurassic flavor,

          though chickens after millennia, 

descend from the t-rex. Asteroid, 

          dust clouds, and time—inked 

in the cosmic cookbook—don’t account 

          for half of our filthy predicament. 

 

The Earth, like a bubble in an aquarium, 

          is precarious and, therefore, precious. 

The Earth, yolky and becoming, like an egg, 

          is a work-in-progress, subject to revisions 

we will fall short of predicting, regardless 

          of our MVP scientists. In a dream, 

the infomercial salesman declares 

          intelligence was our fatal misstep, 

 

our guarantee we would fail 

          to understand the universe, 

especially our place in it, every day, 

          on multiple levels. At lunch, 

an old friend comments on the strangeness 

          of the weather, the sky she keeps caged 

in her electric box. Lately, she dreams 

          she’s eating a peach patterned like a globe, adrift

            

on a globe gone fuzzy like a peach. I examine

          my watch and suggest time doesn’t move

like it used to, an anomaly observers 

          have continued to exclaim since we devised

instruments to measure the hours. She picks 

          apart the crumbs, as if primal riddles pulsed 

among the grease-stains. We hold out hope

          any minute we’ll sprout wings.

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BIO:

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​​Tom Kelly's poetry and fiction appear in The Pinch, Portland Review, Redivider, and Electric Literature. He lives in South Florida. Follow him: instagram.com/tomkellyyyyy

 

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