Autobiography: Exhibited
Q: Who is Carolus Linnaeus?
At The National Zoo in D.C. a man spots a girl maybe ten
feet away—within earshot—at the entrance of the New Mammal
House and admires her looks. The horseshoe bat has a lip that's
covered by the lower-half of its nose in the shape of—you
got it—a horseshoe. She is in brand new madras shorts and match-
ing sleeveless top that her mother bought on credit for the class
trip to Washington D.C. to the National Zoo where the pacarana live
in family groups together with an adult pair and successive litters of young.
The adults tend the young.
Q: Why does the poet-botanist name?
Madras shorts look smart, her mother says, and she folds them in a smart-
looking postage stamp on top of the other packed things. The right
whale is usually found in temperate waters closer to land than
most large whales, especially during the breeding season. The man
admiring her daughter also wears shorts on a hot day, climbing
higher, and a yellow shirt with umbrellas blooming on it. Calves are born
in the protected waters—from what, she wonders—of a shallow bay.
Q: How do the mammalia live?
This man is leading a group of the mentally disabled, buying them blue
and pink slushees from a vendor. The girl studies the umbrellas, the way they
pop across the man's belly, wet in places from the slushees. Linnaeus named
a second human species—Homo troglodytes—"cave-dwelling man." He
practiced close observation. Within earshot at the entrance of the New Mammal
House, beside the group sucking down blue and pink slushees led by the man
in yellow umbrellas, the girl is the subject of observation, his topic
of conversation: Just wait until her milk comes in.
(stanza break)
Q: When does a mammal become endangered?
Later, the girl will ask her mother about this experience
and her mother will swear her mother will swear she doesn't
remember—the troglodyte, satyr, hydra, and phoenix—Linnaeus
claimed these creatures existed; he gave them all names. A winged thing
the horse-shoed bat all the young in one big pack protected
waters what’s the name of it—The Mammal House—home to things
with milk her milk her milk trailing after her like a tail, his words something to grab
onto by the wrist and not let go—here, take hold of this and give
it a good tug, yellow umbrella spread fat across his belly blue and pink
and wet and pink—all that goes unnamed. He likewise defined
Homo monstrosous as agile and faint-hearted, lumping in this race
the Patagonian giant the dwarf of the Alps and the monorchid Hottentot.