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Michael S. Begnal

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Primates

His eyes intimate knowledge, this chimpanzee,
sparkling with the iron light of sentience,
we will have to expand our conception of the word
            HUMAN,
he is maybe the poet of his tribe and wizened
leader whom the others in the photo silently acquiesce to,
his mind forms open lines of hairy thought
knitted in his point in time and forest order


I, again, am alone in the mirror,
older now, a delicate cracking around the eyes,
nail-head pupils and my lashes are a mess,
this is not a photo but an instant never reoccurring
eternal, 3:10 A.M. between golden bathroom walls—
            sapience: unknown—
this face so secretly and fiercely familiar,
I will open another can of beer now but


tomorrow I will kill the poachers 
              / I will murder the colonists 
              / I will cut down the loggers 
              / I will exterminate all the brutes

Michael S. Begnal is the author of three poetry collections: Ancestor Worship (Salmon, 2007), Mercury, the Dime (Six Gallery Press, 2005), and The Lakes of Coma (Six Gallery Press, 2003). He is published in the anthology Breaking the Skin: New Irish Poetry (Black Mountain Press, 2002).

poetrymagazines note: Begnal's next collection, Future Blues, will be published by Salmon Poetry in 2011.

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