Monday Poem: "The Animal Spell" -- by Zachary Schomburg

Someone once told me that animals are people under spells, and if you fall in love with them the spell will be lifted. I recently fell in love with a black trumpeter swan. I watched her ruffle her neck feathers for hours, watched her peck bugs from her breast. I was sure she would make a beautiful bride, but she was always a black trumpeter swan. I once brushed a horse's hair for 3 straight years until it crumpled into death. The truth is there is no such thing as spells. The world is always as it is, and always as it seems. And love is just our own kind voice that we whisper into our own blood.

*     *     *     *     *

Zachary Schomburg is a surrealist poet whose previous publications have been populated by gorillas in people clothes, jaguars, plagues of hummingbirds, and even Abraham Lincoln. His books include The Man Suit (2007), Scary, No Scary (2009), and Fjords vol 1 (2012).

Schomburg co-edits Octopus Books and lives in Portland, Oregon.