An Animal Unfit for Living Unmolested

I find the heavens beautiful,

I find the earth so too,

the seas and the ground,

the furling of water and gas,

the bright distant points

of our isolation. I take comfort

in the swinging pendant traffic lights,

the slurry of wet raw flour.

I am programmed to this language,

and can only voice my rejection of it

in the same language.

This is the power of diaspora,

the difficulty in finding alternative.

Let us send messages to the half-existent.

To excuse oneself, to claim not knowing

the future, is inhuman. I am so worthless

that my body serves as brick,

conscripted to build up my prison

until it is time to lay my own body

down for the walls. It is mechanical,

snipping into the loop of every lace,

separating from every link

the cold wrapped bud. At first the skin

is thick and bright,

then darkly collapses.

Nothing keeps its shape,

nothing stands itself upright,

we keep sliding apart into smaller

and smaller components, and it is

in the air above us now,

we do not mingle with the outcome

of ideas any longer, the energy

that knows whether cruelty

is disinterested or rightful.

They are so happy

while we laugh at them,

their eyes enthused and shining

while we trick them

into hurting themselves.

Copyright Credit: Ginger Ko, "An Animal Unfit for Living Unmolested." Copyright © 2019 by Ginger Ko. Used by permission of the author for PoetryNow.

Source: PoetryNow (2019)