The Animals All Are Gathering

The Animals All Are Gathering

32 The Animals All Are Gathering I’d no idea that I am omniscient. There are just so many phyla, palm fronds with red teeth and palm fronds with green, wings on everything like an old aunt’s tchotchkes, your cells never stop dividing and the slough-off of dividing cells is also without end, hectares upon fathoms of old skin cells, the animals anymore evolve for pure sport, Linnaeus is beside himself. How pointless to heft the zoo onto a low wooden cart and off it goes, the zoo on a cart down the street toward the hilly park sliding into the neighborhood’s craw like waterlogged drywall sliding from its studs. That dog, that goddamn dog, one mutters like a zookeeper who seems entirely to miss the point paul text i-84 -3.indd 32 7/20/10 3:17 PM 33 as the captive animals multiply out of captivity, as the tourists focus directly into sunlight, magenta smears across the cheap video, crepe flung in different colors. I want to describe the Lemon Tree but anything beyond “lemon” and “tree” seems superfluous, gaudy, airy. I meant it when I said “garden” but have become alligator for you. Look at the scales on everything. Here come the animals all, the animals all are gathering. paul text i-84 -3.indd 33 7/20/10 3:17 PM ...