Catherine Weiss
nonbinosaurus rex
when i was a girl i assumed i would grow up to be a paleontologist
mostly because i wasn’t aware of all the other options
or how it would eventually feel
to dig and dig and dig
only to uncover something obsolete
some stone formed body
a few pressure-crushed fragments
destined to be cobbled together
into a guesswork construct
just so mankind can pretend
they’ve found the whole monster
earned the right to name it
in 1869, edward cope discovered the elasmosaurus
but in his haste to publish before his rival
cope reassembled the aquatic dinosaur back to front
head attached to the tail instead of the neck
a blueprint scrambled in the confusion of passing millennia
my 5th grade crush asked me out
by leaving a clammy-palmed message
on our family answering machine
i refused to call him back
even though 110% of what i wanted out of life at the time
was to be publicly adored by this specific boy
instead i practiced the piano melodramatically
one-half of a wistful duet until bedtime
i want to excavate girlhood like people dig up dinosaur bones
to revel in the slow astonishment of time compressing
childhood desire like a wet spine depressed into my mudslick history
each fossilized mystery distorted by the weight of whatever happened next
i feel a bit like the elasmosaurus
like maybe i got myself largely correct
but also fundamentally backwards
when i was a girl i assumed i would grow up to be a woman
mostly because i wasn’t aware of all the other options
or how it would eventually feel
to dig and dig and dig
only to uncover something obsolete
some stone formed body
a few pressure-crushed fragments
destined to be cobbled together
into a guesswork construct
just so mankind can pretend
they’ve found the whole monster
earned the right to name us
Catherine Weiss is a poet based in Western MA. They were the 2017 Grand Slam Champion and the 2018 WOWPS rep of Northampton Poetry. In 2017 they co-founded Pulp Slam, and are a member of the inaugural Pulp Slam team headed to Nationals in August 2018. Their work has been published in Freezeray Poetry, Gravel Mag, Voicemail Poems, Jersey Devil Press, Drunk in a Midnight Choir, Buck Off Mag, Noble/Gas Quarterly, and elsewhere. For more: http://catherineweiss.com.
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