Epithalamium During Mating Season
BY MATTHEW OLZMANN
When the testicles of the marsupial mouse
begin to disintegrate, he swells with a panic
that drives him to have sex until he dies.
Tradition dictates that the female black widow
eats her mate, and that practice also exists
among the greater praying mantis community.
Meanwhile, these two humans keep staring
into each other’s eyes, saying, I do, I do,
but what exactly do they do? Do they
fight lions or guard their eggs on the side
of an active volcano? Probably not.
Does this mean their devotion is any less
enduring, any less fervent or profound
than that of the hippopotamus who sprays
its feces into the sky to attract a mate?
No. It means we’re lucky to be human,
capable of thinking this through before falling
dead from the amorous air as is the custom
of the common honeybee. Any wild thing can feel.
Any feeling can propel the animal forward.
Sometimes, the difference between instinct
and love is hesitation. The capacity to stand
at the inception of some passionate wilderness,
understand its magnitude, its peril, then enter,
not because the marionette strings
of compulsion and desire yank us forward,
but because we’re summoned into the immensity
of and by our own free will, and that
is what we want; this is what we choose.
Finally You’ve Found the Hand
BY MATTHEW OLZMANN
that will hold yours, even years from now,
even when your body stops holding
inside whatever it is that makes you you.
And even then, the hand that holds
yours will continue to hold—but hold
on to what? You’re not you anymore.
And yet, it continues to hold, or
it tries to, the way a sieve tries
to hold water; you are like that water
and this hand will continue
its attempt to hold that, even after
the doctors have taken you, wheeled you
down the white corridor, even after
there’s nothing to hold, the hand will
continue to reach. It might appear empty,
nothing more than a hand whose fingers
curl around a vacancy. How it grasps
at the air. How it fools itself into believing
it’s found some trace of you in the absence
of you. And then, how it doesn’t,
or how it always can’t, or ever, let go.
