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Anatomicon

Hal Y. Zhang

Reading our earliest communiques and—
gross gross, two alien species
darting alien proboscis.
How we gained full mutual sentience,
like a child learning this is
the specter of blue, the sky,
all of it. the unbound above,
not nothing. blue. sky. blue. sky blue.
This, then, is you, your pieces and how
they match mine, hole to hole the same
topologies. Brown. Eyes. Tap tap tap.
Hooked on phonics, hooked on your
nose, no-nonsense. Open for finger aaaaaa
aaaaaa to taste mandibular sea. New inlets, tell
jokes to spill tides, touch to murmur waves,
(hairs) winding round my phalanges
to spin tapestry of us

excavated by future
archaeologists, tangled fleshless, sacrum
to cranium. Sexual behaviors of early hominids
they publish, rave reviews, do you know
they were just like us, all positions
having been discovered by earlier primates
there are only so many. Doesn't take a genius,
just takes two. What are you thinking, your
ribcage rattles.

Just our rites. They'll never know
what our bones do.

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Hal Y. Zhang is a lapsed physicist who splits her time between the east coast of the United States and the Internet, where she writes at halyzhang.com. Her memory-and-loss chapbook AMNESIA will be published by Newfound, and her collection Goddess Bandit of the Thousand Arms is forthcoming from Aqueduct Press.