The Anthropocene Wing

1 Minute Read Time

This photograph shows a geographic sphere of the earth, with a lake being in the background. — Photo by Anne Nygård on Unsplash

What little we’ve reclaimed of what they were 
has become its name, a confection for the ear. 
Bush cricket. Pupfish. Amur tiger. Man.
We think these two divergent trend lines mean 
the rise of this one species brought the fall
of all else: ash trees, breeds of waterfowl. 
At first, we blamed a meteor, but now 
strong evidence suggests the white rhino 
and damselfly—that mankind wanted this.
They drank the black blood of their god until 
they drowned. We find them in the substrate still.
Look how the cranium of this one has
dry wells for eyes that seem to burrow down 
and down, yet they don’t see. Shall we move on?

Brian Brodeur

is the author of four poetry collections: Some Problems with Autobiography (2023), winner of the 2022 New Criterion Prize, Every Hour Is Late (2019), Natural Causes (2012), which won the 2011 Autumn House Poetry Prize, and Other Latitudes (2008), winner of the University of Akron Press’s 2007 Akron Poetry Prize, as well as the poetry chapbooks Local Fauna (2015) and So the Night Cannot Go on Without Us (2007). New poems and criticism appear in American Poetry Review, Hopkins Review, Gettysburg Review, Kenyon Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, Times Literary Supplement, and The Writer’s Chronicle. Brian is Associate Professor of English, Creative Writing with a Poetry Focus at Indiana University East.

Return to top of page

Search