Parthenogenesis
- Parthenogenesis
Parthenogenesis, Britton Shurley, Poetry, animals
If the ankle of a horse is holy, then so is the cow’s cracked hoof, the sheep’s bleating tongue, the wiry
gray taint of a sow. And if each of these things is divine, who’s to say God’s skin can’t shed? That he can’t slink back with a snake’s forked tongue,
belly scratched and hallowed by gravel, to hiss or kiss like the rest of us just dragging our bodies through Eden.
Last night, in a Louisville zoo—where north is stitched to south and where slaves, when the sky was clear, tried to swim the moon-bright Ohio—this virgin
python named Thelma gave birth to a clutch of eggs. There weren’t shepherds or wise men or camels.
No decrees for butchering babies. There was just this guard on his rounds, in this city so few would call holy. His light like a star’s far shine as it lit
on Thelma’s coiled scales, warming what no one expected—these things that were not, then were. [End Page 321]
britton shurley’s poetry has recently appeared, or is forthcoming, in Valparaiso Poetry Review, Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, Southern Indiana Review, and Wacamaw. He received Emerging Artist Awards from the Kentucky Arts Council in 2011 and 2017. He is currently an associate professor of English at West Kentucky Community and Technical College where he edits the journal Exit 7 with his wife Amelia Martens.
