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Joelle Hann Animals One by one the animals disappeared either shot or destroying each other or owned by banks or the military, the short dog, the eagle mean and not giving over, the cheeky sparrow, the terrible melancholic deer. I admired their efforts in the face of apocalypse and so lined up my inner animals in a similar formation: the happy stupid one, the cheater, the bully, the practicing intellectual, the yogini, the softball champion— they looked pretty good together a nice cross-section of society so I fixed myself a scotch and smoked cigars Washington-style and laughed from deep under my pubic bones where my phantom penis nervously waited — once gathered this way these characters acted like union officials out back on their breaks cigarettes burning in solidarity with the sunset; one by one they raised their hands over their hearts — I grew up with animals, you know. I always needed to rescue or rearrange something. I never liked lace the troubling gaps masquerading as pretty completions, nor the spring branches, that dripped with rain then became dry— no, there must be order. Fold shirts and jeans neatly and put them in drawers use make-up, mow the lawn, eat right, the body gracious as a butler— And as if nothing had happened someone butted out her cigarette looking sad like a Chihuahua and said, “Heavy rustling of needles. Uplifted branches— their shapes offer themselves up but then they seem to struggle against their shape—” no— —no one speaks like that I turned away — and when I looked back she was gone like the animals. No! wait — “When I looked back she was laughing,” yes, like that, as though she actually saw something in the trees like a sign the fortune tellers had posted giving up their charade: be prepared for no answer or maybe, be prepared for I.V. needles and crowded wards an approximation of a conclusion— a body’s knowledge here and there then changed into something else — Day After Day miserable still, though different, the morning sun rose into sight. inside the hospital I was recovering from a dailiness quite severe something lost somewhere or too much of me all around or not enough. The interviewers looked down with a joke sealed into their sympathy like medical Houdinis; like secretaries gone for too many cocktails and all their makeups’ running: “If we asked you, could you talk about this more directly?” maybe. “Could you write it in these margins? Is it rhythmic?” yes. “Does it have sound?” it has. Repeating sounds, flashes and strikes. “It has two parts then, the facts and the flow; numbers and voices. Would you like to make a recording?” No I’d like to make amethyst.