iguanodons  

i read somewhere
that iguanodons made good mothers

the duck-billed dinosaur 
late cretaceous walking
as the earth chewed 
gender with bolder teeth 

did she wake up
her children for the bus in
the morning with her 
loon-like call

gentle & wandering

echoing across cliffs

school bus lights glaring
in the driveway

in elementary school we
were frequently late together

scraping the ice off the car's
windshield while i gnawed on
frozen chocolate chip ego waffles
from the porch

came into school while
everyone else was saying 
the pledge

i didn't mind because 
it meant more time
in the living room with you

watching dragon tales 
from the coach as you combed
your hair with a hair clip

did she zip up their winter coats
before sending them outside?

zipper pulled by her teeth
her dexterous hands best for
packing their lunches

kissed scaley foreheads

some paleontologists think
iguanodons had advanced social
behavior--  

others say it was just
herding that left their 
fossils clustered in packs
in the ghosts of dry swamp beds

possibly the victims of flooding

would she make her children wore
rain boots?

did her husband say she
worried too much

as he sipped coffee &
read the newspaper before
going to work with the megolosauruses

munching ferns together in
the sun-rising silence before
waking the children

he kissed her neck &
told her that someday
they would have enough
money to go on vacation
by the beach like other families

i don't know much about
you & dad other than that
you say you love each other 

& that his blue jeep was
there at your wedding

i don't actually know how
you two met & sometimes
i invent a history where 
you're young & in the cretaceous period 

the sky is full of meteors
& you survive by linking 
elbows & fossilizing yourselves 
for a brief few centuries

if i was the child of
the iguanodons i think i might
be more well-adjusted

i'm not blaming you but
it was easier times back then

when everything could
easily be read from 
the faint memories of bones

my own bones broke 
like glow sticks beneath 
my skin & i tried my
best to conceal them
from the dark of my bedroom

did you remember
that night i was up past midnight
with my navy blue flip phone
in my hand?

i was telling my best friend 
that she shouldn't kill herself 
& you yelled at me for
crying so late

i know you were just worried
about me--

i keep that old cell phone
in the bottom drawer 
of my desk because i'm
hoping it will fossilize someday

will paleontologists 
pick it up & determine 
that i was a bad child?

will they find your bones
& tell you that you did 
all you could to be 
an iguanodon--

the beasts wide hips
still give birth to 
cliffs in Wessex--

rocky oceans to wash our hair in

i'm glad i wasn't born 
tens of thousands of years ago 

then uncovered by a british 
geologist who would name
our bones

i grew up
in a house at the top of 
the hill on noble street