I’m still a magpie. If it glitters,
I want it, no matter
the cost—
I don’t connect the bangle
I buy online to a gold
mine’s cyanide heap
leaching, or the made-
with-fracked-gas plastics
that I throw in the trash
to the survivor in an as-yet-
unnamed epoch
who’ll sniff the fossil
bones of a predator
unknown to it, though
the skull that it licks
will likely be ours,
and even if this creature
resembles the rat-size
mammal that evolved when
dinosaurs died, by what blood
chemistry will it breathe?
