by John Dorroh
Lullaby for Opportunistic Omnivores
8 a.m. The kitchen is cold.
My thin socks are no protection
from the sodium lauryl sulfates
in the soap we use to clean the floor.
That reminds me of a documentary
about a chemical company
who dumped waste in a neighboring field
and contaminated the water.
It went unnoticed for 30 years,
while cancer clusters formed and organs failed.
47 kidney transplants within a 10 mile radius.
Even after the company paid out pennies to the dollar
for every body part they poisoned,
the townsfolk still used their products.
When asked why,
one woman looked to the camera
and with a sparkle in her eye said,
“Well why wouldn’t I? It’s made in my hometown.”
And that reminds me of being 14 and heart-broke sick
about the seagulls who lived
in the strip mall parking lot.
They perched atop light poles
and swooped over potholes
as if they were flying over open water.
I imagined they had got lost,
and being so far from shore, they gave up,
making do outside JC Penney’s.
I imagined them eating stale popcorn
from the movie theater dumpster
until it ruptured their delicate bellies,
and they dropped from the sky
into puddles laced silky with motor oil.
They’d miss out on a whole life
of gliding over white-capped waves
and plucking fresh fish from the water.
And they’d never have a chance to chase tourists
or snatch fried dough from the fist of a toddler
who was left unattended near the shoreline.
And that reminds me how a few years back,
I did a google search about seagulls living in parking lots
and found out they are opportunistic omnivores,
which means they’re perfectly happy anywhere
as long as there’s a lot of trash and open space.
Isadora Gruye (she/her) is a writer and photographer living in Minnesota, USA. She believes in cartographers and beekeepers but has little need for maps or honey. Her work has appeared in many places in the tactile and virtual world. Her first poetry collection, The Ladies’ Guide to the Apocalypse, was published in 2019, and her second collection, Doomsday Heart Brings Her Dream Journal to the Book Burning, was part of the Ghost City Press summer series.
website – https://www.isadoragruye.com/. Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/izygruye/.
John Dorroh travels whenever he can. He often ends up in people’s kitchens exchanging culinary secrets and tall tales. “Through food there is communion,” he says. Six of his poems were nominated for Best of the Net. Hundreds of others appeared in fine journals such as Kissing Dynamite, River Heron, Feral, Burningword, and North Dakota Quarterly. He once was awarded Editor’s Choice Award from a Midwest journal with a monetary prize large enough for two sushi dinners.