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Graduate Studies |
I
Even the old, wild-born baboons
leave off masturbating their thin dicks
to groom the new mothers.
Even fenced into two naked acres of Texas
barren females can snatch
and hide an infant
until it turns to leather
and a juvenile grabs and flings
the corpse onto its back
to play pony—
For God's sake, says Stephen, my supervisor.
Don't anthropomorphize the animals.
(He reminds me
each behavior is coded for statistical purposes,
and playing pony isn't one of them.)
Yellow males charge, but shy away at the last.
But females can carry a grudge and creep up,
hours later, to bite a tail clean off.
(During estrus
their asses are a
gorgeous red.)
They stare at us
in our tower.
Stirring the dust at their haunches—
It's only the skeletal structure of their shoulders that
stops them from throwing feces at us
like the chimps do.
II
I face the wind
for most of the orientation
and never hear how many generations
of Japanese Macaques have been on the Dilly Ranch.
Monkey chow spills from the tailgate of the old Chevy
and the alpha male climbs up with us,
sticking one of his arms into the bag.
Oblivious to me.
Or maybe not.
And maybe it isn't pity that leads me to coax
the toothy old female to needle the system.
I know that by taking food from my outstretched palm
she risks having her belly ripped open
by a higher-ranking monkey’s incisors.
Each animal is tattooed
and it's hard work.
Stephen guides me
as I do number 168:
My arm going numb from elbow to fingertip
steering the fat instrument's watery momentum
over her right flank.
Manifesting tiny beads of blood,
like panning for gold.
III
In Houston, the rhesus monkeys
are kept in isolation, because they might be
infected with Monkey B.
A researcher in San Antonio was bitten
and died three days later.
Stephen walks down the hall, toward them.
But he tells me to wait where I am,
in front of the Mandrill:
Play Doh-masked,
monkish as a vintage doll.
From this perspective
it's difficult to count the number of cages,
or the number of sterile, linoleum squares
between Stephen and me—
and the Mandrill
which is mesmerisingly still.
Isn't breathing.
Is breathing.
And its eyes—his eyes, wet and open
The rhesus' chattering gathers weight
Spilling from cage
To cage
To cage
IV
(1992)
Stephen calls from California
‘Just to say hello’,
but I’m living with someone now.
Holding the phone up to his front door for a moment,
Stephen then asks, Do you hear it?
It’s the rioting.
We both laugh.
We thought he’d left that kind of thing behind.
copyright 2008
Ren
Powell |
