from Abecedarian

 

Sally Keith

​

 

A

 

Animal

little animalcule.

ammonites and annelids.

 

In taxonomy-talk,

articulata is

a joint or a hinge.

 

I got sucked in

studying all sorts of

stuff, like dust.

 

One animal

had partitions,

waved in patterns—

 

waves, waves

on waves.

 

 

*

 

 

C.

 

A cutaneous surface.

A fat cotyledon.

 

The ever-forking idea

of what was once.

 

Crustaceans,

cephalopods

 

the hairless cetacea,

blowholes for breathing.

                       

Behind one cave,

another,

 

someone

spelunking.

 

Did you read that,

Curculio,

 

little beetle

of the weevil family?

 

A friend says he pulled something small

from something large,

 

but so far it doesn’t mean anything,

yet.

 

 

*

 

 

F

 

for flora, fauna;

the leaves in the yellow-

green-florescent phase;

 

that part of fall

fat with color;

 

for fossilferous, forcula,

and fossorial; 

                       

for the soft-bodied

who need to bury down;

 

for feldspars,

mineral forming rocks, rocks

jutting out so

 

they are graspable, or might be,

 

otherwise, they dust,

invisibly, the ground;

 

for feelers

the scientific name for which

 

I cannot figure.

 

 

*

 

M

 

for mother,

mammalia, the mammiferous

suckling their young;  

 

Malcrustaca

for a species of spider

a man found in Morocco

 

—out one night he just saw it

carried it home on his hand—;

 

Mother’s Day;

marriage;

mammograms:

 

some secrets, the MD said,

are too close

for our good—