An Insult to Biology, and: Political Animals

Abstract

An Insult to Biology, and: Political Animals Rebecca Wolff (bio) An Insult To Biology This mutualityhow you hiss at me on the phone your expletiveshow I relishthe brutality of prefiguring: partially severingyour head from your body — particular arteries, slicingmotion of my blade. How ruthlessly I would move. For we have made our childrenthey live on the earth and are its last hope and your DNA and my phenotype and the workof our blood constricting — they live together. It’s likelice, persistentmetaphor. Our daughter’shead, hospitableto them. They cross from one home to another,riding the carrier. You don’t know how [End Page 539] to see the seedlikesilver eggs or their flat,hair-colored bodies. They turn themselvessideways. It takes hoursto sit and patiently, lovingly, decipher each nitfrom each long strand of teenage hair. She’safraid to ask you to do this, and afraid to ask youto let me do this. Because of your monstrous implication. Don’t you see the heads will rollcontinuously. Don’t you seethe chopping block. You can’t chopoff someone’s head to rid them of lice. You have to pickthe eggs off with your fingers and put them in a bowl of soapywater. They drown. And then you drink it. That is how to rid a darling head of lice. [End Page 540] Political Animals I am of the 2%We do not speak casually to our petsMine endure my silenceThey warble all day for food even though I feed themjust fine — clearly they are lookingfor something elsefrom me — humans call it lovePsychologists call it attachmentRelational psychologists call it relation.Today — . . . I am so sick of the structure given to me for tellingmy stories. It goes: I am here,sitting in a chair on a special day. It is finally getting cold out,winter 2017, when will people stoptelling me it’s a beautiful day, it’s not beautiful if it’s poisoned.71 degrees in November. One black catsettles in my lap — this is not unusual, nota story worth the centering of my self. Sheis the little sister lap cat. Do youpost pictures of your cats or dogs all day every day? Wellthen I un-follow you. TodayI am sitting in a chair, having forced myselfto stay here long enough for these creaturesI live withto find me trust me experience time passing and me staying still. Theyonly see me standing still when I am standingglued to my phone [End Page 541] scrolling in a stateof doped paralysis, you heard me,there’s nothing good going on thereyou are being drugged, ropedand branded this is no joke. I amhere in my chair to tell you. In my lap the first cat, littlesister, who every day steps aside from her meal with bits to spareon her plate for her big fatbrother, steps aside in a way I haveinterpreted as sisterly,her concern her care her lovefor her brother, who she also licks clean whenhe stands still for it,today it’s cold enoughand he climbs up on the chairto suss out a spotnext to her in my lap. A first. He uses his whiskersand other devicesto calibrate and calculate depth, exactlyhow much space-time he needsdetermines the angle of reclineand now I have two black cats in my lapsleepingwhile I read a review of a bookon the poet Czeslaw Milosz’s long-buried critiqueof Americans, the regular kind, and also Americanintellect and intellectuals,and how they are bought/ [End Page 542] sold, the bubble of consumptionthat makes them sleep/ keeps them from waking. Brothercat shifts and heaves his bulkencroaches a bit on sister’sspot, I feel dangerous in my lap, sisterfeels it too, rises up,hisses like a boss.Her blood runscolder than I thought. Thesekingdomstake the cake. There is no more...