Collective Nouns for the Anthropocene, and: Holding That Gaping Empty Till It Stills, or My Cat Harvey Milk Nickole Brown (bio) Collective Nouns for the Anthropocene Say a guillotine of coal mines, a phantom limbof peaks—all those headless mountains once calledhome. Say a jones of cell phones, a heart's burnof information, the flash and rush of usmeasured in megabits per second. Or say a wonderment of children, at least those few still playingoutside, quickening Styrofoam cups with a writhing catchof whatever insects are left to find. Say a blisterof news, another throe of tornadoes, a heat rash spreading, slow-cooking us all, a nationof frogs that do, in fact, jump when the red eyeglowing on a lab stove's burner is cranked up one slowdegree a time, despite the myth a frog's too dumbto know when boiling alive. But what does it matter when the water'srich with factory runoff, when you can jump all you wantbut there's no way to get out of nowhereelse to go? And what does it matter when you can forgetspring—such a nostalgic word now— a time my wife renamed roadkill seasonas she fast-pedals past all those newbornsmewling in bent grass, the milk-filled teats they wait formeat-streaked across the street. [End Page 70] Say a click-through of desperation,a comfort porn of goats-in-pajamas videosand sneezing panda memes, a few seconds of somethingthat passes as joy with each clip. And because there are alsoserious films, know cats and dogs is no longer a sufficientenough metaphor, say instead a hard rain of walrus: now that the ice they need is gone, watch how the herdhauls up on a place they don't belong—a rocky beach,how cumbersome thousands wobble up and upa jagged incline until it's too late, and like us, they've stranded themselves with no room leftand can't back down. They crowdthe ledge until one by one they plummet over the side,and as they fall, they find themselves confused— falling being a thing a walrus has never knownbefore, a thing they have no concept of at all, at least not untilhumans got ahold of this good earth. One after another they fall, and like us,they are not as afraid as they should be, ignorantas they are of the laws of nature that apply to them.And you might imagine their unintentional suicide a grenade-confetti of blubber and ivorysickening the shore, but no:most land whole, their injuries internal, only a thin red tricklefrom dead nose to dead eye marks what happensnow that the glaciers they need are gone. I watched that footage, and still,still—I fired up my car again. I cranked upthe air. I stopped for a sip of sweet drinkin a plastic bottle and topped offthe tank. And still—if you were to ask me [End Page 71] what I was doing, I would tell you not much,just going about my day. Because, yes—I'm sorry— I too have used the word murder for a flock of crows,that blessed oil-slick iridescence watching from above,clacking to one another, assessing if I'm a benignthreat or something to actually fear. I listenand listen to their raspy kraas, a song ofwet coal and hardsun, ashamed they know the truthof who I really am, knowing the collective nounwe've given thembelongs wholly to us. Holding That Gaping Empty Till It Stills, or My Cat Harvey Milk Not the paw but the fan of bonesin the paw: their scoop and clutch,kneading made needing, becausewhen it comes to mothermilk, those homonymsupend the vowels, throw that needless k away. Making biscuits, we tease, but in realitywhat we witness is vestigial, hotly nostalgic, orin the case of the viral-eyed meow mixscooped up from the pound and namedHarvey Milk, our cat—Jesus be my shield—biscuit-making is...
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