print previewback MARK IRWIN
The Chimpanzee
from another zoo, just transported, clasps one hand
to the cage, tentatively
looking, blinking at jabs of light through trees, before entering
the diorama with its un-
real grass, each blade like the green seconds
crushed within a day’s hour. Now the chimp lies in the shape
of a comma, a pause in a sentence having taken
millions of years to arrive. What
would you do? It stood and looked
at dimensionless walls, a veldt pasteled with trees, then suddenly
stopped, the way
a cliff might, then continued the way a child too eager suddenly arrives
at old age. 
Brief Sketch from There to Here
The
Chimpanzee
Twist-O-Flex