Photo by Ethan Currier
In the Zoo
Shana Ross
many mammals will kill and eat what they birth. A risk
of captivity. The keepers only rarely intervene. You can
see the shape of my childhood if you know where to look.
Thick skin and crooked teeth. Too aligned to be fixed for free.
Once I sat in a theatre, legs crisscrossed and knees touching,
saying things we observed to be true. My partner had a cowlick.
He had laughlines. I called them kind eyes and bright eyes.
He told me my smile was perfect. There are ways for that
to not be a lie, so I held onto those and started climbing. I
don’t want my child to feel pain, but I want him to understand
mine. I am a hypocrite, because I am not interested in knowing
more about my mother. In a museum, they put stuffed animals
in dioramas. History goes in boxes. Most zoos do it differently
with the living. Fields and forests instead of boxes, the illusion
of freedom is enough to keep most animals from self-harm. I
don’t tell my kid why I avoid the dentist, I just make him go.
His teeth are soft and get cavities. Mine have been impervious
for decades and counting. I let him focus on making it through
the drilling. Speaking of cannibalistic infanticide, it happens
in the wild, too. Rats, especially, but that’s only one danger.
If rats become entangled at an early age, their tails become locked
as they grow and they will not escape each other until everyone
in the situation is dead. We don’t call it a monster, we call it a king.
Not all suffering is celebrated equally. I moved to a city, sure,
but one with no rats. I did not give my mother the address.
Shana Ross
many mammals will kill and eat what they birth. A risk
of captivity. The keepers only rarely intervene. You can
see the shape of my childhood if you know where to look.
Thick skin and crooked teeth. Too aligned to be fixed for free.
Once I sat in a theatre, legs crisscrossed and knees touching,
saying things we observed to be true. My partner had a cowlick.
He had laughlines. I called them kind eyes and bright eyes.
He told me my smile was perfect. There are ways for that
to not be a lie, so I held onto those and started climbing. I
don’t want my child to feel pain, but I want him to understand
mine. I am a hypocrite, because I am not interested in knowing
more about my mother. In a museum, they put stuffed animals
in dioramas. History goes in boxes. Most zoos do it differently
with the living. Fields and forests instead of boxes, the illusion
of freedom is enough to keep most animals from self-harm. I
don’t tell my kid why I avoid the dentist, I just make him go.
His teeth are soft and get cavities. Mine have been impervious
for decades and counting. I let him focus on making it through
the drilling. Speaking of cannibalistic infanticide, it happens
in the wild, too. Rats, especially, but that’s only one danger.
If rats become entangled at an early age, their tails become locked
as they grow and they will not escape each other until everyone
in the situation is dead. We don’t call it a monster, we call it a king.
Not all suffering is celebrated equally. I moved to a city, sure,
but one with no rats. I did not give my mother the address.