The part of us that sings is the beast.
You wish. Why do we try to draw this?
Some of our dreams look like they could live,
Could fly, feed, breathe. A big cat with wings
Looks strange and would lack lift for such heft,
But it could run and pounce. It could roar
And rip prey to shreds and shit their bones—
It looks like it could, at least. But these?
These waist-up apes in the mouths of fish?
What the hell is this? And we like them,
Make up tales as well as tails for them.
You can laugh, but it goes deep, this thing.
They show up in lots of worlds, these dreams.
True, we’ve long drawn what we like to eat
As if we were part of it—horned heads,
Our eyes, furred thighs, clawed feet. We wish this,
To see the sea-change caught in the act,
The strange fact that we are what we eat
And what eats us. But this thing with fish
That cough up the halves of us that sing—
As if we’re the fish whose voice flees us.
