Fire

by Joy Harjo

a woman can't survive
by her own breath
alone
she must know
the voices of mountains
she must recognize
the foreverness of blue sky
she must flow
with the elusive
bodies
of night wind women
who will take her into
her own self

look at me
i am not a separate woman
i am a continuance
of blue sky
i am the throat
of the sandia mountains
a night wind woman
who burns
with every breath
she takes

The Zoo

by Gilbert Sorrentino

Goliathus goliathus, the one banana
peeling beetle in the U S A, brighter
than a comicstrip, is dead.

"Wrapped in his native grasses," left
on the doorstep of the museum
and a favorite of the visitors,

4 and 1 half inches long with an
8 inch wingspread, bigger than
Skeezix, with a life more full,

peeling his bananas for survival,
unlike Mamie Mullins, unlike Moon,
who would be Skeezix but for

the environment, ah! Who cares
or believes in them at all, at all,
goliathus was better and he

not a native.