GINGER KO

A Species with Milk for Its Young to Remove

As soon as
the air touches
their privacies,
the illusion
of living chills.
Somewhere they
gently push
into a dust pan
the last bits
not irreversibly
turned plastic.
Cleanse
the storytelling,
abort the mythmaking,
empower the mundane.
At times death
is imperfect,
is an accident,
a scramble of feathers.
The wind pushing,
pushing the trees
that were stiff with
night's cold,
kneading the stems.
The mistakes
that lead to
senseless death,
the mistakes
of apathy, of
heedlessness—
ignorance is
a mistake too.
Eventually STOP
grows chains
that mean not
just ceasing but
turning back also.
STOP
STOP
STOP
STOP
becomes just a game
STOP STOP
STOP STOP
STOP STOP
STOP STOP
means heading
ceaselessly in
the same direction.
Grasses, vines,
moss, ferns,
the unambitious
ground cover content
with the horizontal.
Mosquitoes hover
near the exposed oil
at the joints,
breed in
the tread grooves.
Nowhere to rest,
a lifetime becomes
whittled down to
a few sleepless weeks
of flapping away
from predators beneath
before spreading wings
on the water
in exhaustion.
The seas process
the living, the ice
only stops them.
After, the catastrophic
sheen of oil,
the energetic buoying
up and spinning
of headless, limbless
torsos, bleached
and hairless.
The automatons
riddle the traps
with shot
before lowering them
into the sea.
Why shoot them first?
the next generation
asks. And so
dispose by
drowning them
within their
final prisons.

The father, the parasite, the alien; candybirds, teacurs, satchetmice

How can they all
be indistinguishable,
how can they each
be specialists:
within their bodies
they are working
out a revolution,
yet they still meet
in the street, find
a table at a restaurant,
turn their gazes
to the televised basketball
above the bar.
They understand
that when they drop
flowers onto bodies,
the bodies,
however still,
are pushing up
against the flowers.
Certain things make
them lose confidence
in their senses: inconsistent
motive, vindictive sabotage.
They imbibe mist.
Turn it into cold heavy
drips in themselves.
Capture, make dependent,
then destroy with neglect.
It is often easier
to fight the colonizer
with his own language
than to face one's
lost family with
the unintelligible. Must
everything become
abstracted to
a buzzing iceberg?
A glitchy stillness
to the living while
the ideas of power
crackle in the upper
atmosphere. Is this
the final, natural conclusion?
How can it be painless,
to carry in one's marrow
a script made intolerable?
We cannot burn garbage.
It no longer means
anything. We were
mistaken to make
waste, taking what
we cannot return.

Ginger Ko is an Assistant Professor at Sam Houston State University's MFA program in Creative Writing, Editing, and Publishing. She is the author of Motherlover (Bloof Books) and Inherit (Sidebrow), as well as several chapbooks. Her poetry and essays can be found in The Atlantic, American Poetry Review, The Offing, VIDA Review, and elsewhere. You can find her online at www.gingerko.com.