The great silverback
presses his haunches to the glass,
unfazed, chewing,
the amazed faces of children
a natural part of his terrain.
The children line the belled
viewing space
like a chattering fringe
of tropical primate.
They are easily reverent,
nudging, elbowing
only to alert
their fellows to
a fascinating monk
climbing the real
crenelated trunks
or combing real mites
from a crony’s
coarse coat.
All adults are bayed
behind a railing,
officially warned to stay back
from the children.
Nick is
by far
the smallest,
except for the baby
gorilla latched
to ropes of hair or grasses.
He refuses
to turn
when we call,
fastened to the nearest clan of apes
as they make
off with their loping
uprightness
into the limited range of
our rescue.
Later,
down at the orang
habitat,
Jane, raised to be human
by a disaffected
rock star,
peers winsomely into the crowds,
courting affection with aggressive
refusal to rejoin
her own kind.
Mae
is wedged
on a stool before Jane’s gaze,
her well-thumbed notebook full
of Jane’s travail.
Freely feeding
facts and features of
orangutangia
to the questioning
curious,
it is clear
that she feels
she’s on the wrong side
of the glass.
Still later,
Nick studies the ants
outside the lemur house
and, though there are no exhibit signs
with place of origin and Latin species
names and data,
ants
might well be
just
what we
came for.
Kate Falvey’s work has been published in many journals (including previous issues of DO) and anthologies; in a full-length collection, The Language of Little Girls (David Robert Books); and in two chapbooks, What the Sea Washes Up (Dancing Girl Press) and Morning Constitutional in Sunhat and Bolero (Green Fuse Poetic Arts). She co-founded (with Monique Ferrell) and for ten years edited the 2 Bridges Review, published through City Tech (City University of New York) where she teaches, and is an associate editor for the Bellevue Literary Review.