Poem Starting with a Line by Jason Bredle

According to Hercules, if we make an angel
then we will spend our nights picking feathers
from our teeth. It, that divine one,
will surely smirk at us. This will trigger an element-
ary school response.
                          In which we end up Greco-Roman
wrestling on the living room rug. Someone
on the sofa begins a drone on anti-evolution
and the forked branch in the family tree,
but it is the split tongue of the devil that starts the war
between the limbs.
                            Full nelson under and over
the extra appendages. No uncle is acknowledged.
From the easy chair, someone wonders why
there is no evidence that early men mated
with Neanderthals; everyone assumes it
must have happened. Back in the laboratory
we are splicing together other species
that never thought to rape each other—that’s why
God made test tubes. And the electron
microscope and the atomic knife. An erector set
gone mad
              with the imps of boredom.
Face pressed to the mat, it is easier to think the planet
might really be flat as a plain while pain sprouts roots
in the shoulder and its blade and blossoms
along the spine. What is math good for
when the referee is counting the while spent
in this perspective.
                            The angel feeds you his leaves
and dander—perhaps you are a dust mite
or what was bugging Kafka. The opposition
has no room
                  for pondering stupidity.
The mat gets pounded, the whistle is blown—
someone by the coffee table says,
It wasn’t much of a match after all.

Copyright © 2007 J. P. Dancing Bear All rights reserved
from The National Poetry Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission