Someone dropped a pair of sunglasses
into an orangutan enclosure. She cautiously climbed sideways to look at it,
back to the audience, picked them up,
inspected them,
and peered through the dark lenses at a dark enclosure.
She took them off again, just to make sure her world was really bright,
put them back on, and felt special
perhaps.
On a small hill, with her tiny child reaching up
to play with the strange object,
she looked out at the world like Audrey Hepburn,
grabbing her child’s grabby hands with her large one
and holding it.
I always thought King Louis was born
of Kipyard’s imperialist mind,
but rather, he was Disney’s,
another kind of white man
who doesn’t understand
that orangutans don’t want to be like us,
they are us, and I’m not
being dramatic.
So many futuristic space shows feature
a human zoo.
Not like traffic or the stock market floor,
but a proper alien-sponsored enclosure for a man
and a woman in their natural environment.
How absurd it would be, the writers thought,
to put an intelligent creature like us behind glass
for the amusement of another species.
Melcontents 