SHOOTING THE LAST FEMALE WHITE GIRAFFE

by Martin Willitts Jr 

A white female giraffe, thought to the last of its kind in the world, has been killed by poachers, conservationists in Kenya have announced. The rare giraffes were discovered in 2016. Independent (UK), March 11, 2020

It has come to this:
everything wrong
is someone else’s mistake.

We need to resolve whatever we can.
We cannot let the world get set so far back
it appears intractable, beyond re-setting.

You have to be sensitive to have common sense.

Already, the polar ice caps have retreated,
exposing bare rock. We should have suspected
negative consequences when we tracked the dodo
into non-existence. Once, the sky was blackened
by carrier pigeons, and forest were crowded
out the light. Once, we practiced the love
we preached and summoned our decency.

Everything has led to this:

we consider it a triumph
if we live through each day.
We’ve turned the corner, turned our backs
when Adam and Eve cast out of Eden
never glanced back, learning why bother
preserving what you can’t ever keep.


Martin Willitts Jr has 24 chapbooks including the Turtle Island Quarterly Editor’s Choice Award-winning The Wire Fence Holding Back the World (Flowstone Press, 2017), plus 16 full-length collections including the 2019 Blue Light Award-winning The Temporary World. His recent book is Unfolding Towards Love (Wipf and Stock).

WARNING: GRAPHIC IMAGES, NOT SUITABLE FOR CHILDREN

by Jonel Abellanosa

“Marius the reticulated giraffe died at the Copenhagen Zoo on Sunday . . . The cause of death was a shotgun blast, and after a public autopsy, the animal, who was 11 feet 6 inches, was fed to the zoo’s lions and other big cats.”  -- The New York Times, February 9, 2014

                          Nazi

                          Eugenicists

would

also

never

pause

        to take

      into

account

why a healthy   

peaceful           lovable                     

giraffe              named

Marius             shouldn’t             

be euthanized           then

dismembered   so children

visiting            the zoo

may watch      and see

how                 civilized

hungry             lions

could                   also be

        

Jonel Abellanosa resides in Cebu City, the Philippines.  His poetry is forthcoming in Anglican Theological Review, Mobius Journal of Social Change, Inwood Indiana Press, and has appeared in Windhover, PEN Peace Mindanao anthology, Star*Line, Golden Lantern, Poetry Quarterly, New Verse News, Qarrtsiluni, Anak Sastra: Stories for Southeast Asia, Fox Chase Review, Burning Word, Barefoot Review, Red River Review, Philippines Free Press, Philippine Graphic.  He is working on his first poetry collection, Multiverse.

DEATH OF MARIUS

by Skaidrite Stelzer

Image Source: CNN

In the Copenhagen zoo the children watch
with solemn faces, dressed
in their winter gear, blue hooded,
as Marius the giraffe is shot through his
head with a crushing bolt
and falls dead instantly.
Then the removal of the pelt as
the children's faces,
expressionless,
watch the autopsy and
the meat
appreciated by hungry lions.
The inside of a giraffe has many interlaced
organs. The children learn how they were put
together once.  It is a natural environment. Only
later will they learn the lightness of their own organs,
the human autopsy now vaguely familiar,
an implanted memory.


Skaidrite Stelzer lives, writes, and teaches in Toledo, Ohio.  Her work has appeared in numerous literary journals including Glass, Baltimore Review and Storm Cellar. 

THE NEWTOWN MASSACRE

by Buff Whitman-Bradley

Human Giraffe by Subwaysurfer. Image source: Art Jumble Blog

When my children were little
I used to tell them that I was a giraffe
You’re not a giraffe, Daddy!
They would insist
But I stuck to my story
Oh yes I am

When their friends came over
My children would say
Our Daddy says he is a giraffe
But he’s not
The friends would look at me quizzically
And I would say
Oh yes I am

One year I decorated a birthday cake
With a pink and green giraffe
That’s me I said
And although my daughter was growing older
And no longer amused by the same old routine
She indulged me and said
You’re not a giraffe, Daddy
But I could see in her eyes
What she was really thinking –
Whatever
And soon I stopped being a giraffe
Once and for all

I remembered all this today
As I stood silently in the rain
In our little town’s park
With one of my grown daughters
And a score of others grieving the gunning down
Of twenty school children in Connecticut
And I thought about
All the silly-dumb-boring family jokes
Those murdered children will not hear
Over and over and over again
About all the stories that will not be read aloud
About the bikes and games and snazzy sneakers
That won’t get bought for birthdays
About the pet names and nicknames
That will go unused
Missy, Natty, Buddy Boy, Baby Cakes
Mikey, Skeeter, Nan

I believe I chose to be a giraffe
Because it seems such an odd and improbable creature
Something Evolution doodled on a notepad
During a long dull meeting
A goofy-looking non-threatening beast
That doesn’t scare little ones
A gentle quiet Mister Rogers kind of animal
With a body as big as a house
Where a child could take shelter during a storm
And be safe

It is morning in the Serengeti
Clear skies 60-plus degrees and climbing
And while giraffes are waking up to another day
Of browsing in the treetops
And caring for their young
A long cold dark night begins
In Newtown, Connecticut
And in the wintery, violence-wracked heart of America


Buff Whitman-Bradley is the author of four books of poetry, b. eagle, poet; The Honey Philosophies; Realpolitik; and When Compasses Grow Old; and the chapbook, Everything Wakes Up! His poetry has appeared in many print and online journals. He is also co-editor, with Cynthia Whitman-Bradley and Sarah Lazare, of the book About Face: Military Resisters Turn Against War. He has co-produced/directed two documentary films, the award-winning Outside In (with Cynthia Whitman-Bradley) and Por Que Venimos (with the MIRC Film Collective). He lives in northern California.