on politics, potato(e)s, and chimpanzees :: shenanigan stew (soup and salad, too)

I listened to a piece on the politics of chimpanzee shenanigans as I drove through a rainstorm. All guards down. All windows up. All wipers (and widgets) operating at full steam. The speaker said something about size, shape, and showers. I listened as the rain streamed. His stream of thought took a sudden cut—with a sharp (no blunt-tips) chop—and the station transitioned to a bit on Bob’s Discount Furniture. Apparently, the purchasing team acquired a premium, also highly discounted, lot. Consumption, airtime, and purchases ultimately intertwined. Bob as aggressive as most chaps (and chimps). Eventually, the convo returned. The speaker hadn’t missed a beat. He eloquently spoke of opportunities embedded in cultures, ways to modify behavior, and windows to suppress certain (some peculiar / more not) predispositions with unusual verve (as well as an option for waiver). 

My stomach growled and I realized—primate families are often as peculiar as undercooked potatoes. Random lots of spuds—a little sweet / a little sour / often more salted (and salty) than not. I wondered what chimpanzees might think about sautéed potatoes or turkey-flavored gravy atop a homemade shepherd’s pie. The speaker didn’t lie, but power is peculiar and gender dynamics (often problematically) persistent. Limitations linger even as edges sizzle amidst newly emerged hues. Chimps, like other primates, tend to pay a regular round of irregular (and highly cyclical, rarely whimsical) dues. 

Despite the increasing prevalence (and presence) of women in politics (chimpanzee and others), terminology persists. The term alpha male as arbitrary as an alphabet’s positioning (and poison). Also, as peculiar as the deepest layer of politics (both primitive and traditional). Shepherd’s pie also complicated. Mixed and mashed. Don’t forget us, yell the spuds at the bottom layer. All while knowing, the pie is going to cook (also going to be dense)—no matter how hard (and whether or not) one tries. Some potatoes will end up on five-star plates. Others as one of many in a basket of fast-food fries.

There’s also lots to be learned about politics (both environmental and contextual) while living a life as an anti-Barbie and Ken dealer in an older individuals’ rest home. The kitchen served potatoes for lunch yesterday. The day before that, too. Scooped and then slopped from a 16-quart pot. I wonder what the chimpanzees would think of the variety of our daily lot (plot)? Do they know better than you and I? In a 2015 study, Warneken and Rosati found that chimpanzees preferred cooked to uncooked potatoes. Bartering and trades a common combination. I’m not sure. At the core of each carefully plated plot, it’s still the same spud.

Training is tantamount to both taste and tenacity. Food chains are as fascinating as fairness. All recipients acutely aware of potato propositions, proportions, and positionality. There’s always a little (sometimes a lot) more on one plate – sometimes the one to the right, other times the one to the left. A cucumber is sometimes dropped beside a grape. A carrot sometimes brushes a garnish. Mashed and mixed. Power clashes in peculiar ways. Pastimes as pressing as postal stamps. Meals and mayhem often delivered. Potatoes and politics a staple. Did you catch the chimpanzee waiting in the limbs of a maple?

It takes eighty to one-hundred days to harvest a potato (a curious analogy to the century-based pace of political change). Chimpanzees in the wild live, on average, fifteen years. Those raised in captivity closer to thirty. I wonder what they’d choose, if presented the opportunity. The distinction between captivity and wild grows increasingly smaller. Angles converse. Plotlines dull. Politics muddle and meddle. Averages no more than a series of mathematical applications and equations – quickly calculated numbers (across multiples and divides) amidst well-established ordered of operation.

At the end of the day, politics and play rock both hierarchy and games of hot potato. Add a dash of this. Add an extra teaspoon of that. Shenanigans both a smorgasbord and buffet. Biologists have always been used to individual variability. Chimpanzees also well aware that no two trees are the same and no potato a path to primate fame. Potatoes are neither perfect squares nor symmetric circles. Chimps are as porous as any crated lot. We all soak up the atmosphere in which we persist.

The rain cycled (and recycled) as I drove. Some rounds relentless. Others less bold. A red car to my left was pleasant (not unlike a mashed potato when properly cooked). The vehicle let me merge when I missed the passing lane. All champions (whether cars, cuisines, chimpanzees, or competing politicians) can be nice when the elements are right (and despite their power dynamics of place and any ongoing race). One of my favorite things about a potato stew is that there’s always more room in the pot. To add a pepper. Perhaps some tomato paste. Then an onion. All flavors influence others -- interactions often idiosyncratic but never isolated. All language a base. It’s always an appropriate time to season and stock. Also, to take stock of both tolerance and taste. As I drive, I continue to listen. To learn and absorb all I can from Frans de Waal on Gender: Through the Eyes of a Primatologist.

Note: Inspired by "Gender Roles, Primates and Frans de Waal," an episode of the podcast Radio Times on WHYY, the NPR station in Philadelphia.

—Submitted on 09/24/2022

Jen Schneider is the 2022 Poet Laureate of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. Her poem have appeared in Spillwords Press, The Write Launch, Fevers of the Mind, and many other journals.  

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If you enjoyed today’s poem and you value our online series, consider making a donation to Indolent Books, a nonprofit poetry press.

Editor’s Note: The series title A River Sings is borrowed from “On the Pulse of Morning,” the poem read by Maya Angelou at the inauguration of Bill Clinton in 1993. 

Attachment: for Helena Qi Hong

1/ In Insomnia

In this 
Expansive  
Moment of
Post-midnight 
There are all
The muted 
Sounds of
Thought
Hauling
An indefinitely 
Prolonged 
Trail of feel
Like a train
Running with 
Endless cars
On a rail
Stretching afar
Beyond
The morning glow

2/ Double Nesting

  You are a bird, always in search of a nest
 (An open cage?), where your body & soul
Can both come down to perch for the cold
  And long night, no matter how far or high
                 You’ve been flying during the day

    Yes, just as her vagina is the nest of your
                Penis, her love is that of your soul

In the Moment : for Qi Hong

Where yin and yang
run into each other
Where the Atlantic and the Pacific
meet
Where a fallen leaf is blown up and
flies like a bird
Where she reveals
her fair and shapely shoulders to you
Where a pile of scrambled words
assemble themselves into a line
Where an ant tries to cross a crack
in the cemented pavement
Where you hide the fragments
of a collaged photo of you two
Where he enters to make love
while she is talking dirty with you
Now is the moment in which
to set your selfhood in mindfulness

Note: The poem above was not submitted flush left, but this digital format cannot accommodate complex lineation. 

Zen Secret about Happiness

Less = more, as many know it

But few can do this calculation in deed:
Whereby you can maximize your happiness
By reducing your desires to the minimum
As the denominator of everything you already
Have for your outer existence; in other words

Happiness = haves / wants

—Submitted on 09/24/2022

Yuan Changming (pen name of Wuming Yuan) published several monographs on translation before leaving China. With Allen Yuan, he edits Poetry Pacific. His poems have appeared in Best of the Best Canadian Poetry in English: Tenth Anniversary Edition (Tightrope Books, 2017) and Best Canadian Poetry in English (Tightrope Books, 2014), as well as in Literary Review of Canada, London Magazine, Paris/Atlantic, Poetry Salzburg Review, The Threepenny Review, and other journals.

SUBMIT to A River Sings via our SUBMITTABLE site. 

If you enjoyed today’s poem and you value our online series, consider making a donation to Indolent Books, a nonprofit poetry press.

Editor’s Note: The series title A River Sings is borrowed from “On the Pulse of Morning,” the poem read by Maya Angelou at the inauguration of Bill Clinton in 1993. 

Daily Routine
 
another day of checking the numbers,
just part of the routine.
I watch them climb and tumble,
climb and tumble.
a lottery without a ticket,
and no real prize.
still waiting for the flatline,
like a heart in a season finale

my husband brings me coffee
and I take the laundry to the basement.
out of detergent. will the men 
of the neighborhood lose their minds
if I go buy some without putting a bra on

late last night when I got off work
a man called out to me,
"hey lady just getting off work!"
yup, that's me I guess
it's funny to me when they say
things that are simply factually accurate.
me in my uniform.
me in my daily routine

when I play wordle,
my first guess is heart
and my second is jumps.

***

Going Back
 
This neighborhood has ghosts,
and most of them are friendly.

At the coffee shop, someone 
still remembers my order. 
 
A neighbor sits in the same spot,
reading the newspaper. I know
 
that he switches sides of the street
to follow the sun. I know 
 
when it rains, he picks up his little dogs
and carries them beneath the scaffolding.
 
The dentist updates my address
and changes my emergency contact to "husband."
 
One flower shop 
replaces another.
 
A girl bikes by
holding a mirror.
 
The person who lives in our old apartment
has green curtains and I know nothing else.

***

Normal
 
Children shouldn't have to hide in a school,
locked down and waiting. It's not normal
to need dress rehearsals for active shooters,
never knowing when the curtain will go up.
Or it is normal, and it's too normal, 
when this isn't normal. Shouldn't be normal.
 
Are we accepting this? 
It feels like we're accepting this,
the inevitable news cycle. 
The thoughts and prayers.
The moments of silence. 
The decisions to do things
that don't get done. 

—Submitted on 09/24/2022

Abigail Welhouse is the author of Small Dog (dancing girl press, 2021), Bad Baby (dancing girl press, 2015), Too Many Humans of New York (Bottlecap Press, 2016), and Memento Mori (a poem/comic collaboration with Evan Johnston). Her poems have been published in The Toast, Yes Poetry, Ghost Ocean Magazine, and other journals.

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Editor’s Note: The series title A River Sings is borrowed from “On the Pulse of Morning,” the poem read by Maya Angelou at the inauguration of Bill Clinton in 1993. 

Tiger for the Nth Time

Those twelve numbers got loose escaping
the clock glass like tigers from a cage, still
they are not timeless. A stuffed toy tiger
purchased at a grocery store sits on my bedside
table nameless matching my pink blanket
decorated in patterns of friendly tigers. 

In the realm of dreamland he, with black beady
eyes glazed over, could not put his paw up
to summon that tidal wave to stop mid-air
to retreat like his prey. I don’t pray, ashamed
I use my hands another way prior to drifting off
to sleep still woke up gasping for air.

As if I was drowning at the beach, my bed
not a lifeboat as tears escaped as I clutched
my blanket tighter as I proceeded to wet
the bed (still in my bright blue basketball shorts) 
but no tiger was chasing me even though 
she liked to use that analogy for my body.

The physiology of fight freeze or flee—
I told her I’d rather be a bird for a day 
to fly away from here yet still would be caged 
by my own mind no matter how many tigers
looking up I witnessed those clock numbers
replaced by twelve pictures of tigers.

—Submitted on 09/24/2022

Sophia Falco is the author of Farewell Clay Dove (UnCollected Press, 2021). Her poems have appeared in The Beautiful Space, Lighthouse Weekly, The Mindful Word and other journals. Falco graduated magna cum laude from UC Santa Cruz, and is pursuing an MFA in creative writing at Saint Mary’s College of California.

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Editor’s Note: The series title A River Sings is borrowed from “On the Pulse of Morning,” the poem read by Maya Angelou at the inauguration of Bill Clinton in 1993. 

The Waiting Room

Her eyes are fixed on the oversized,
galvanized wall clock,
its steady hand on a round dial,
mechanically measuring hours and minutes,
always moving, never stopping.
She struggles to suppress her anxiety.
Her husband has been in the operating theater
for many revolutions of the hand.
Then the clock strikes midnight,
doors swing open, the operation successful.
She will have her loved one back.
With a full swing of her walking stick
she shatters the glass of the timepiece.
Relief courses through every waiting vein.
Stop the hand! Make time to stand still
so that the joy of their reunion
may seem timeless.

***

Graceful Light

Where do we find you, graceful light?
With Goethe on his deathbed asking for “more light”?
In the pink line of dawn?
Or the purple stream of a sunset?
In the flickering golden gleam of a child’s waking eyes?
Or the pallid blur of an old person losing sight?
The night is never dark and the light is never far,
as when an illuminated glint of the sun breaks
through the gray clouds with its blessings.

***

An Old Woman’s Body

Staring at my reflection in a mirror
my heart rate ticks up.
The corners of my mouth droop.
I wasn’t promised that my lean figure
would last life’s entire journey,
but why are my once firm breasts now sagging?
Why the extra cushions around belly and butt
as if my cells had been inflated?
Even my arms have flaps.
My skin molts but fails to renew itself.
And what happened in my beloved garden
when my knees buckled and I couldn’t get up?
I sigh at so much dilapidation.

As I sit down,
still looking at my mirror image,
my eyes brighten and
the sides of my mouth curve slightly upward
at the sight of a toddler jumping onto my lap
and snuggling into its warm, soft contours,
loving my body just as it is right now.

***

Earth Beneath My Feet

Succulent mud squishing between my toes,
stirring dormant seeds in fertile ground
where plants can take hold.
Green shoots become flowers
that bloom in abundance in due season,
unmindful of their beginnings.

Earth is to vegetation
as parents are to their offspring,
preparing rich plots
on which the young can blossom
into adulthood, unaware of the roots
in the nourishing soil of their forebears.

***

The Rainbow Tree

Am I the tree with deep roots
and thick bark?
A burrow for a fox at my base,
a hole in a sturdy limb for an owl?
Each winter ice storms break some branches,
but in autumn golden leaves hold sway.

Once I was a sapling
curiously poking through snow cover,
stretching my greening arms toward the sun.
In spring birds flocked to the nectar of my white blossoms
and in summer hands reached for the juicy purple plums.
I was perky and secure in my harvest.

What spans the life cycle
of a budding and aging tree?
It’s a rainbow bridging beginning and end.
If I balance from one pole to the other
over curves and along bends,
I can savor the colors of each stage.

—Submitted on 09/24/2022

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Ute Carson is the author of Listen (Yellow Arrow Publishing, 2021). Recent work has appeared in Pithead Chapel, Canadian Horse Journal, Motherwell Magazine, and other journals. She lives in Austin with her husband. 

Editor’s Note: The series title A River Sings is borrowed from “On the Pulse of Morning,” the poem read by Maya Angelou at the inauguration of Bill Clinton in 1993. 

Word of the Year: Resilience

If your eyes cannot unsee sticks and ashes
where homes used to be nor the severed
limbs of the dead
your nose cannot lose the stench
of charred bodies nor the reek
of corpses left behind by roiling waters
your ears cannot stop ringing with the shriek
of incoming shells nor the screams
of the stricken
your stomach cannot uncoil
the clench of helpless fear and rage—
sorry.

Only the dead—smothered by mudslides
swept up by whirlwinds hacked by machetes
struck down by missiles—are excused.
Survivors must rise up smiling.

Oh, not right away—
no, no we feel your pain—
but soon.

—Submitted on 09/24/2022

Suzanne Osborne has worked in theatre, academia, and the law. Her poems have appeared recently in Newtown Literary Journal, Oddville Press, and Poetry Quarterly. She lives in Forest Hills, NY. 

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Editor’s Note: The series title A River Sings is borrowed from “On the Pulse of Morning,” the poem read by Maya Angelou at the inauguration of Bill Clinton in 1993. 

Alms for Oblivion

Some suicides kill 
not only themselves 
but also their identity, 
traveling to a remote 
place, getting rid 
of clothes, rings, 
wallets, whatever,
so that the body—
if anything is found 
besides a skeleton 
that can’t be traced— 
is nameless. Instead 
of heaven or hell, 
some of the dead
chose oblivion.

Perhaps the best way 
to be resurrected 
is to be forgotten.  
Sometimes oblivion 
is the gateway to 
great fame. Consider 
the case of Tutankhamen.  
Or better yet the cave 
paintings of Lascaux, 
unknown for more than 
twenty thousand years
the walls are still alive
with spear-bearing men
and horned animals.

—Submitted on 09/24/2022

William Heath is the author of Steel Valley Elegy (Kelsay Books, 2022). His poems have appeared in Cortland Review, Massachusetts Review, South Carolina Review, and Southern Review, and other journals. He lives in Annapolis, MD.

SUBMIT to A River Sings via our SUBMITTABLE site. 

Editor’s Note: The series title A River Sings is borrowed from “On the Pulse of Morning,” the poem read by Maya Angelou at the inauguration of Bill Clinton in 1993. 

The Muses as Flamingos

In the predawn desolation 
of the salt marsh
you wait.
Tidal pools seethe— 
life eating itself 
over and over.

You wait, 
a little chilled, 
not entirely hopeless,
simply present,  
waiting. 	

Because the limitless, grey emptiness 
sometimes splits, 
and they pound in,
the sky suddenly
awash in pink.
The long necks
stretched forward,
the long, backward-bending legs stretched out behind,
and the glorious wide wings, 
their firecracker orange undersides
edged with crepe,
lift and press against the air,
their very motion
improbable.

—Submitted on 09/24/2022

SUBMIT to A River Sings via our SUBMITTABLE site. 

Editor’s Note: The series title A River Sings is borrowed from “On the Pulse of Morning,” the poem read by Maya Angelou at the inauguration of Bill Clinton in 1993.