on the theory of descent
BY COREY VAN LANDINGHAM
—Darwin
He meant, of course, origin. What
strains from what framework of bones.
The form
the giraffe bends
down to the dirt same as the elephant,
binding our foreign, numbered—L4, T7—
weight. And from the war of nature
comes the production
of a higher animal. Say
from the war of nature comes
what we need—
a machine more than man. What mind wouldn’t
want this? Clean tactic, poor boys
of America safe before a screen.
My friend caught, in Jalula,
by an IED, not quite right
still. Who am I, then, to demand
a higher order.
There is grandeur,
Darwin says, in this view of life.
The new technology
that keeps our Global Hawk air-strong
thirty-four long hours. Improving the real
bird’s endurance by a day. So art
plays nature’s second part.
Coiled, darker
than black, the engine resembles
sci-fi’s most gleaming
machinations. Death-helmet, snake
pit, asteroid-flung. O endless forms
most beautiful. It looks ready
for space,
another world.
Over Gaza
men call drones zanana—nagging
wife. Slang imitating sound. How hungry
language becomes. Thy soul was like
a star—They are as gentle as zephyrs,
blowing below the violet—
Her beauty hangs
upon the cheek of night—Always
we want more. Catch up, fiction. We are
already our most gruesome
design. Operators, in their padded
chairs, in low, tan Midwestern
buildings, cannot hear
the buzzing—like
a thousand chainsaws—these new birds
make. Bangana—Pashtu for wasp—
sing us a song we can fall down
into. Sing something decent, something
far off and sweet. We are, we now know,
made from star stuff. Who wouldn’t feel
god-like, so hovering, so composed.
