Natural History

A skilled glassblower exhales a molten bubble. Burning liquid cools into a perfectly transparent globe. Within the crystal sphere, a primal landscape of abundant life. In this elemental scene, a captive herd of triceratops graze, contented, unaware of confinement. They have never known the humiliation of an embezzler, handcuffed, doing the perp walk in an orange jumpsuit, or the psychosis of a condemned murderer, staring at nothing, locked in a windowless cell on death row. Formidable creatures, inside their glass ball, they feel as free as songbirds that don’t yet exist. Supersize reptiles stomp and chomp primordial vegetation, mossy trees waving ferny fronds. As soon as they eat a meal, horny beasts start farting and belching, releasing greenhouse gas that fuels the teeming forest. Enclosed in their fragile dome, a bunch of big-boned lizards that never glanced at a hominid, never voted in an election, never built a machine, composed a melody, or solved an equation. Neither have they pondered the meaning of life, nor funded their retirement. Somehow, they don’t seem anxious or depressed. As a flurry of snowflakes swirls in their tropical zone, not one of them dreams of leaves turning to oil, or coal to diamonds.

White Collar

Eventually, your immature fun cashes out the public trust. The signature moves of your dominant hand, now resigned to the stress of repetitive motion. Toothless mongrels slobber on your cleanest dirty shirt. Alas, slim pickings for the avid pack, panting to lick the butcher’s bones. At sunrise, following a sleepless night, eternity remains hard and multidimensional. Regard the broken exit sign, a safety violation. Hello to a hellscape of plaintiffs nursing personal injuries based on your fraudulent appraisal. There’s no adding an escape clause when the window’s already closed. Then life speeds up with you, in extreme long shot, running in faster frames. Even if you spot your nemesis in the crowd, you miss the sniper on the roof above.

Harryette Mullen’s poetry collections include Urban Tumbleweed, Recyclopedia, and Sleeping with the Dictionary. Her essays are collected in The Cracks Between Who We Are and What We Are Supposed to Be. Her poems have been translated into Spanish, French, German, Portuguese (Brazil and Portugal), Polish, Swedish, Danish, Turkish, Greek, Bulgarian, Russian, Kyrgyz, and Vietnamese. She teaches courses in contemporary American poetry, African American literature, and creative writing at UCLA.

Photo by Hank Lazer.