THE PETTING ZOO

The alpaca named Dean gave my daughter a rash.
The frizzled chickens peck away at the toenails
Of a young woman from St. Louis as she splatters
Some feed about hoping to attract the biggest cock.
Caging these beasts seems appropriate, their spectacled
Ideas of ducks a big part of their departmentalization.
They graze in the fields scarfing up their discovery
Of a new way to insert flora into a thimble, gobbling
Up their latest inventory of syntactical mash.
Slightly paranoid, the alpaca whispers his latest uncertainty
And no matter how he spits I will not disabuse him of it.
A plastic fork becomes chewing gum. A mirror
Makes the chickens feel haunted. Walt Disney assures
Me that my children will remember the names of
Shakespeare’s characters. Wittgenstein is not poetry.
Seventeen angstroms is a distance crossed quickly
But is interminable. Three brothers from San Ramon
Place their mother’s newborn in a washing machine
At the Laundromat. Outside, a beggar begs for 50 cents.
The libretto we recall is a St. Louis sandwich shaped
Like the gateway to the west. The alpaca is well paid
And is grateful to lick the salty shavings from my hand.