Anxiety waits 
for a table 
under a cave painting. 
Water stirred 

with a spear. 
Keeping it together 
is a form of digestion 
and digestion 

is a form of commitment 
to the dignity 
of letting it go. 
One part of you, 

as an act of survival, 
starts eating another part. 
This is a membranous 
decision 

in which the crowd, 
having mistaken 
its periphery, resembles 
its prey. 

It was unbearable 
to see the possum 
lying there. 
You asked me 

to drive over its head 
with the car. Hope 
is such a strange 
evolutionary adaptation. 

What selective pressures 
must have been 
its shepherd, 
what drinking glass 

with an envelope 
placed over the top 
carrying a spider outside? 
Against the occupations 

and desertions, 
against the bodies 
tied to trees 
and the flags partitioning 

the wind above them, 
against the accumulated 
wealth 
that acquires a house 

with an aquarium 
big enough to require 
its own diver, 
against the majuscule 

Idea of refined sugars 
and depictions of capital 
concentrating 
on its breathing, 

there is this hopeful 
monster. 
You breastfeed 
the survivor 

with coded plans 
for escape. 
The signal slips 
through undetected 

like the possum 
and its adaptive 
capacity 
to convincingly die.