print previewback JOHN ALLMAN
Selfie
Let’s do this like a trilobite with an underwater smart-
phone (it rests against the debris of an old eruption. I
only have to nudge it) and show how I shed last year’s
crackle and armor. How friendly I seem, nude, my calcite
eyes seeing in all directions, the curved spines gone. How
I lie on my back, waiting for a loved one, then twisting in
the silt, my three (or four—the light is poor this far under)
antennae rising out of the darkness, into which you too have
descended. And we embrace as the unshelled are able, our
soft abdomens pressing against each other, while above us
the fanged creatures of the lighter regions, born to penetrate,
howl in envy (if they can, without lungs), even though we’re
mostly extinct, and this photo won’t be seen for a million or
more years, when something with two legs and arms in a rubber
carapace, its single eye a sunken moon, clicks a button on our
(very) smartphone that’s under a shipwreck. And here we are.
Grinning in ways no one has ever seen. 
GMOs
Jacob’s Limp
Selfie
Thrift Shop
Vernissage