Animals: Two Poems by M. Cynthia Cheung
Notes in a Minor Key
My best friend said the only way she’d find God
is if she got locked up in prison, & she’d pick
Jesus over the rest because he has the most
subscribers. I mean, a couple days ago when
I learned that birds can vocalize two separate
notes at the same time & that there are islands
inhabited by ancient reptiles simultaneously
almost extinct yet powerful enough to kill
prey in seconds—I, too, almost
believed. But it’s easy for things to slide
back. This week’s employee newsletter
includes this acknowledgment: O Lord, so many
souls in a hot truck. O they burned up, & we
cringe at imagining it. Were you there
with them? Please, Lord, say that you were.
I try to imagine how it’s possible to hover
& still be God. Maybe it’s like asking why
music in a minor key feels more profound, & is it
just the way human brains were made?
What about birds, what sounds
saddest to them? Naturalists say form
follows function. Clever hands & avian throats—
in a garden of earthly delights, is grief
our function? Any other two-legged beasts
could sing, unnoticed, inside our grottoes
of fire. How do our small-tailed lives
fit themselves to the locks
through which God threads his fingers?
I Wonder as I Listen to Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9
if the voices I hear weren’t
already some form of prayer / would I
like Napoleons’s troops dying
in the Russian winter / use my hands
that have never held gun / only scalpel
to slit open a mare’s
belly / climb inside the steaming red
cave of her ribs / and live
in that silence / unborn animal-
child / is it possible
those now-dead men thought
of naked Atlantic tides flinching
from a shore I also know / it’s no coincidence
that pray is pronounced prey / as in
have you seen or heard things that aren’t
really there / it’s a standard question
what shall I say / when every night
I wait for the mares’ return / their bodies
rustle like feathers / they arrive
crushing sugar in their mouths
sonic / more than blindingly
bright.
About M. Cynthia Cheung
M. Cynthia Cheung is a physician whose writing can be found in The Baltimore Review, RHINO, Salamander, SWWIM, Tupelo Quarterly and others. She serves as a judge for Baylor College of Medicine’s annual Michael E. DeBakey Medical Student Poetry Awards. Find out more at www.mcynthiacheung.com.
