A Non-Sequitur for Darwin
By Danielle Goncalves
I was 3 weeks late when I called my sister.
We sat on her back porch and talked about Europe.
About the hanging carcasses in France’s butcher
shops, and how she became a vegetarian.
I scheduled an appointment as her 2-year-old chased bubbles.
My sister pursed her lips as he laughed at the delicate
rainbows. Every few moments he’d fall silent.
He was always startled when they popped.
~
Across town the 5 o’clock news reported a shooting.
That night the victim’s mother received a call
at 12:08am. At 2:17 she found the hospital,
and her son, stabbed once between his ribs.
She later wrote the station an angry letter.
For airing faulty facts.
For disclosing his name.
For knowing of his death before she did.
~
Before I left, I wrapped my hair in the handkerchief
my grandmother calls a babushka.
She has a habit of speaking to me
of a Poland I’ll never remember.
She carries a stone from Dachau in her pocket
and never throws anything away.
Her counters are littered with Wendy’s cups.
She tells me she keeps these things, “just in case.”
~
In a Florida Walgreens a man spit obscenities
at a blushing pharmacist. His face contorted
as his tongue punctured each syllable.
The other customers averted their eyes.
The man was told there was nothing to be done.
His threats wouldn’t change his mother’s
insurance plan. He left the paper bag
on the counter, and walked away.
~
In the waiting room I flipped through a copy of Discover.
I paused at a photo of a Glass Squid.
The caption stated there are over
60 species of these deep sea creatures.
It claimed a sexually mature female carries 7 thousand eggs.
The image reflected only major organs
and a thin outline. Through her hollow
body, the ocean appeared black.
~
In southern India a man hums through fish scale lips.
There are over three thousand villagers held within
his colony. Over twenty-eight hundred are infected.
His daughter is not one of them.
He cooks her breakfast before she leaves the camp.
He shuffles kettles around the stove top.
He has learned to work around the stubs.
When asked of her father, his daughter grows silent.
~
Carrying a stolen magazine, I join you on the bench.
Studying my feet I tell you, “Dying isn’t always
the absence of a pulse.” As you reach for my hand
you say “Living’s sometimes little more than surviving.”
We stay like that a while, hand in pale hand.
We watch toddlers play in a sandbox.
A girl runs up to me and places a clear
blue pebble in my hand.
Danielle Goncalves is currently a working writer pursuing her MFA at the University of Massachussetts-Boston. She graduated from Elms College in 2005 and was a contributing editor to their literary magazine, Bloom. She writes both conventional and performance poetry. This is her first major publication.
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