Ode to the Ichthyosaur Maternity Ward
I've got five hours left of my shift and the Kroger's
thinned out, so I'm leaning against the self-check podium
and avoiding my manager's eye contact, my head full
of ichthyosaurs—giant wet dead mountain lizards,
real long–beaked expressionless fucks. I like the way
paleo-artists draw them, like they're about to weigh
pork tenderloin as bananas, like they're about to return
a half-eaten bag of chips for being too stale. Bug-eyed.
Thoughtless. Easily confused. Paleontologists found
a cluster of them (dead, just the bones) in Nevada,
named them Shonisaurus popularis after the mountains
they died in and labeled the dig site a burial ground.
They argued over how so many of them could die
so close to each other, only to change their minds
decades later, saying now that it's a birthing ground
as much as a dying ground—an Ichthyosaur maternity ward.
As I wiggle a hundred-dollar bill loose
from the mechanical guts of self-check station #652
—a customer standing slack-jawed behind me,
sweat dripping down their neck—I think about
a fossil found mid-birth, forever giving life to a smaller,
somehow deader version of itself, and I think about
that ichthyosaur, specifically, walking through
my check-out lane. I want to have awkward
small talk with her, the oldest not-mother at the ward.
Between scanning cans of security-tagged baby formula,
I'd tell her how coal miners found her decades
before the paleontologists, how they used to press
bread chunks into her plate-sized vertebrae,
sopping up precious bean juice droplets before
heading back into the earth where they found her,
broken up with the minerals and the rocks people
buff up and sell—would she understand capitalism,
my prehistoric clientele?—I'd tell her about rough,
dry tongues peeking out from coal-crusted whiskers
to taste what was once her spine, about the men
convinced that her purpose, millions of years after her
living and shitting and dying, was to hold their supper.
As she enters her EBT PIN with her long,
freakish beak, I'd tell her how this disturbed
me, at first, this using of her body that they
didn't know was a body, but then I'd tell her
about my roommate's cat and how he makes
my legs into a bridge to get from the coffee table
to my lap. I'd tell her about the happy pressure
of my friend's palm on my shoulder as she
balances herself to fix her shoe, and I'd tell her
about late night bonfires, about me and my friends
puzzling our hips together to get closer,
to get warm. I'd tell her that, when I die,
I could only hope that some overworked,
down-on-his-luck fuck would use my spine
for a moment of respite, not caring what
I used my vertebrae for while living,
not knowing what a vertebrae is
in the first place. The only thought in his
crusty, concussed head a slab of bacon
he's planning on getting with his next day's pay.
A treat to break up the bean-bread dinners.
A greasy, indulgent delight that he'll eat
off the notches of my back. I can only hope
that someone loves me like that before
some store inspector comes around, takes
one look at the check-out lane I've collapsed in,
and crowns me Krogersaurus bitchalaris.
