There Are Two Kinds of People in This World:
There Are Two Kinds of People in This World:
those who cry when they learn another whale’s
washed up dead, its stomach full of garbage,
or those who say the beach is far away
and I’ve also forgotten the last animal,
its bottle cap belly dissected by wind
and kelp flies. There are two kinds of dead
whales on this beach: those who died
because the water was too warm,
and those who swallowed too much plastic.
There are two kinds of plastic on this beach:
the kind we’re holding, and the kind the sand
is holding. There are two kinds of holding:
the kind when you hold it all in, like an academic,
and the kind when you hold forth, also like
an academic, but also like an animal, tearing
into its prey, and there are two kinds of animals
on this earth: those who are killing it,
those who are being killed. The killer whale
is the latter of these types, even though
we’ve given it the sort of name we like to offer
those things that keep this world alive:
instinct, or bees, the hybrid ones, they call
them Africanized honeybees, they’re the ones
we created when we were playing one
of two kinds of odds.
Maya Jewell Zeller is the author, with visual artist Carrie DeBacker, of Alchemy for Cells & Other Beasts; the chapbook Yesterday, the Bees; and the poetry collection Rust Fish. Her essays and fiction appear in recent issues of Passages North and Booth Journal, as well as the anthology This is the Place: Women Writing About Home. Zeller teaches for Central Washington University.
She is debuting an original work for Bedtime Stories Spokane, Humanities Washington’s annual fundraiser, on October 26. More >
- Category: Poetry
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- Tags: Bedtime Stories, Bedtime Stories Spokane, Poetry