Positively Pre-Cambrian

by


At any given moment there are
seventy-seven hipsters whose
eyeglasses don’t have prescription
lenses bellying up to a half-dozen
bars on the same block of the same
road to order one of three drinks,
none of which has yet been
invented. But that first sip will make
your toes curl, turn your insides
into fossil fuels without that pesky
ossification step getting in the way.
Rumor has it the plaster used
in the construction is mixed
with archeopteryx feathers, the blood
of trilobites. We know if we drill
down far enough, past the bones
of ancestors we never met across
our kitchen tables, past the piles
of books discarded by the bookmobile
for their lack of objectionable content,
past the tell-don’t-show and the prayer
meetings over shots of rocket fuel
and the secret tunnels medieval
scholars used to smuggle
illuminated copes of Debbie Does
Dallas to Canada, we might, just might,
find Buddy Holly’s glasses, the lenses
of which are being used in the still
that produces the stuff that sends
your spaceship to the outer reaches
of the last time you kissed the first
person you ever had a crush on.

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