There are three kinds of wild ass on Earth
& none thrive in our hemisphere.
Hee haw, goes the African wild ass;
the Syrian wild ass is likely extinct;
& the Indian version, widely known
as the half-ass, has no song of its own.
In ancient times, the half-ass was broken
& put to work in fields or the home.
But it was clumsy & overly sensitive
so mankind rejected this brute
in favor of the less imaginative donkey.
In the time that it takes you to read this far,
one-half of the half-asses’ habitat
will be plundered for profit
& progress. Consider a moment
the specimen pictured below.
A mild god in his carriage,
born with head already low to the ground,
he licks rain from a tire
as if to remind us that meekness is plenty.
A reminder to man, who unfurls
lines of iron through vacant expanses
& drills through the crust he stands on.
Man, who catapults man into darkness
to pluck out the secrets of vacuum
& planet. Man, who plumbs woman
as if Eve were recumbent on inklings.
By the time that you read this,
a star will fade out of the velvet.
Someone will stop writing his poem
& walk into the river. There’s his hat
on the surface. It’s starting to rain.
Call it artless, but I like when a man
makes an ass of himself without reason.
I enjoy when the crooner
can’t quite hit his note for the heartache,
the pity & spittle aloft in the spotlight –
or when the coroner whips off his smock
& gets down on his knees
to bray. But mostly, I like it
when rickety women in wheelchairs
can’t squeeze through the turnstiles
& someone like me plays the hero.
who knew there would be so much
blood in a horse not the horse
not the horseman ashing
on the mudflap as he counts
three or four reds in the sunset
thinking maybe gradations
could empty one’s head of a horse
when a jumbo arcs over unlacing
the clouds into mane he tosses
his boots on the flatbed & ashes
who can tell patterns from pieces
who can tell pieces from pieces
of pieces if smears on the windshield
were berries he wouldn’t see wings
sprouting out of the mess
they wouldn’t flutter so much
when he exits the interstate
hard by the drainage ditch swarming
with dragonflies fucking aloft