Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!rutgers!mit-eddie!EDDIE.MIT.EDU!Love-Hounds-request From: Love-Hounds-request@EDDIE.MIT.EDU Newsgroups: mod.music.gaffa Subject: Poem of the Day Message-ID: <8612021808.AA06611@EDDIE.MIT.EDU> Date: Tue, 2-Dec-86 13:08:29 EST Article-I.D.: EDDIE.8612021808.AA06611 Posted: Tue Dec 2 13:08:29 1986 Date-Received: Tue, 2-Dec-86 20:31:03 EST Sender: daemon@mit-eddie.MIT.EDU Reply-To: Love-Hounds Organization: Love-Hounds Anonymous Lines: 26 Approved: nessus.mit.edu Really-From: nessus (Doug Alan) BESTIARY (by Sharon Olds) Nostrils flared, ears pricked, Gabriel asks me if people can mate with animals. I say it hardly ever happens. He frowns, fur and skin and hooves and slits and pricks and teeth and tails whirling in his brain. You *could* do it, he says, not wanting the world to be closed to him in any form. We talk about elephants and parakeets, until we are rolling on the floor, laughing like hyenas. Too late, I remember love -- I backtrack and try to slip it in, but that is not what he means. Seven years old, he is into hydraulics, pulleys, doors which fly open in the side of the body, entrances, exits. Flushed, panting, hot for physics, he thinks about lynxes, eagles, pythons, mosquitos, girls, casting a glitering eye of use over creation, wanting to know exactly how the world was made to receive him.