Immigrant Song
All birds—even those that do not fly
—have wings
A constant confession
Admission of omission
This is your punctuated equilibrium
And everything in between
Slow it down
The moment of extinction
The death of the last individual of a species
(Let’s put it aside for now)
Stay with it
This is our gene flow
How do you like our genetic drift
A riff, a rift, a raft…
Too rough for the second half
Take us under, take us downhill
Paint pangenesis all over your dancing body
The new party god
Keep the beat going, don’t stop, you can’t stop
Crick & Watson
Evo-devo
This is your mother’s local phenomenon
If this is racial hygiene
Why do I feel so dirty?
Microcosmic soul
It’s an involutionary wonderland
This living matter
A modern synthesis
4.6 billion years of biology
Can’t stop the ideology
Graduate from meet/mate
To fitness landscape of sexual selection
From land over sea
It’s a hard lyric
The impression of a key in a bar of soap
A transitional fossil
Keep camping
Plant the flag
Bury the burial mound
Put the pop in popular
And the sigh in science
Copyright Credit: Sun Yung Shin, "Immigrant Song" from Skirt Full of Black. Copyright © 2006 by Sun Yung Shin. Reprinted by permission of Coffee House Press, www.coffeehousepress.org.
Source: Skirt Full of Black (Coffee House Press, 2006)