i've been wondering what darwin 
would think of me--

the queer body-blasphemous boy 
with the hormone needle in his thigh--

sophomore year of high school
our biology teacher Mrs. Knight
didn't teach us evolution--

the assignment was to write 
our beliefs in a paper 

3 options
creationism, intelligent design, or evolution

this poem is the 4th option--

& for years i was proud of my
vehement defense of intelligent design--

my entropy empty cells--

as if my god ever had 
enough ink to write what we 
would become--

i laugh at the notion
of blue prints-- my cells
break the dining room window
with a folding chair--

crawl in on hands & knees

i had to force myself into my
own body--

i'm thinking about 
Gregor Mendel--
the monk who grew peas & figured
out about genes--

would he plant heredity
like a halo at my widow'speak?

would he ask me if
any other family members 
of mine had come out like this 

like lock smiths
of our own front doors--

i dislike wreaths--

the door is only another
word for tongue--

my freckles taste like nutmeg

& there's Mendel in
his garden-- when the peas
trade colors he kills them
out of fear--

let's come back to darwin--

in freshman composition we
read the origin of species 

when i say his name i think of him
sitting in that same old photograph

black hat & scraggly white beard 
on the inside cover
of the book

"my work is nearly finish"
he says--

like i said the first time
i cut off all my hair
salon tile floor--

fingers stained with blue dye--

it takes centuries to make 
a body-- 

darwin you sold me lies

that "each species had not been 
independently created"

you cannot rid my skin of
creation-- there
are gods that exist
only in my own bones--

this is the collage--
the frankenstein magazine body--

this theory is messy & involves 
the clipped wings of canaries

my desk lamp flickering
as i sew my hands back 
onto my wrists finger by finger--

rebellious tendons--

this re-evolution--

these bodies find their own 
fossils to trust--

oh darwin 

"we shall then see how Natural Selection 
almost inevitably causes much Extinction 

of the less improved forms of life"

i want to ask him 

if what i've done to my body 
has ever counted as "extinction" 

if he knows how
many match stick heads have
died in my forearms for this--

this theory is of self-love

this theory makes new bodies

this theory doesn't have a species--

is un-natural--

was never selected--

i am full aware that nature would
never have selected me--

i selected my own bones from
Mendel's garden--

from the white flowers &
stakes driven into the wet earth--

my skin is sedimentary--

oh darwin
do you believe in the rocks
that i bit open?