Wild Kingdom

for Milan Kundera

This is your foreign correspondent,
Aristotle, for The Poetics,
reporting live from the Mediterranean
where the skulls and bones of a few Egyptians
crown the tradeships of His Majesty,
wave back and forth:
starfish—moons—Februaries.

To my right, our military advisor,
Hernando Cortez,
oversees operations at the Aztec/
Mexican border
where to the left of a stone no longer rising from water
a dove collects
its nest egg
upon the skeleton of a hummingbird.

To my left, our scribe-in-residence,
St. Nickle-and-Dime-‘Em-To-Debt,
scribbles furiously to a mortgaged future
where the last rites of man
and of-man
are delivered at the near-twin
births of the lyric and gunpowder.