
Life Expectancy
It’s 2016, just after gravity’s first speech.
Here I am, lying in the dirt, attempting to sense
the rotation of an earth I imagine
to be singular in space.
I watch the breathable take
shape, though my eyes are inadequate, poised
between nanobes and primitive galaxies. You’ll find me
at my sewing machine, soon enough, mending
the spacesuit I inherited
from a chimpanzee who never knew he was
heroic or beloved. I’m running
on memory, congratulating myself on having survived
prehistory, when my clothes rotted off
and my hair was its own
ecosystem. I want my cave back. I want the paintings I exhaled
in my own blood
to be saved in Technicolor, for the earth to unswallow
a feast of dawns, just so I can pierce
the heart of an unnamed animal.
Devon Walker-Figueroa lives in Iowa City, where she serves as the poetry editor of The Iowa Review and as co-founding editor of Horsethief Books. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in BOAAT, Permafrost, Fjords Review, and Southword. In her free time, she plays the harp and dreams of adopting a capybara.