No trilobites, no ammonites, no longer
will I pray to a brontosaurus instead
of the Christian god. I will not admit
it was because he was taller. No titanosaurus,
no longer will I believe in the asteroid, the exile
where the vocal and spry were saved, no
I will not identify with the feathered anchiornis
for his supposed sensitivity, no bones will be thrown
to the circling pterodactyls, I am not one
in the lineage of the extinct. Nothing came
before me. I have no father, though I am my father’s
only son. My goldfish will die without pellets,
but I will not die. I do not belong to the scaled
and floating few. No longer will I stand in the museum,
in the cavity of the tyrant, the terrible one,
and be his heart. I will not be judged for his kills
by cloaked man or meteorite, I will not die
for what is now mountainside. I will no longer
stand complicit behind my mother in fall,
beside the fallen apples, when she says it is too bad
about the apples, I will no longer feel bad,
I will not be remembered as I am, in the garden
with the dog’s bones, weeping, categorizing.
