Animal Facts
by Jolie B. Smith
You ask for animal facts while driving through Illinois,
a long stretch of land from north to south, changing
between flat and tall. The shades: blues like royal, cobalt, indigo.
The towns: Loda, Kankakee, Champaign-Urbana. Nothing special to you
But to someone, I’m sure. The white-tailed deer is the Illinois state mammal.
It can run 40 miles per hour. Fact. Reticulated pythons:
One of the only snakes to be documented fully eating humans, fact.
This morning, before you left, ants found the bread
I have learned to live with others. Little men ran out of the pillowy dough
and onto the pan. You rescued them with a knife,
gutting a hole through their middle. Some rescue.
Years ago, you saw red ants eating ducks from the inside out.
You talk about it like it could happen to us any day. Be careful what you chew
A five day old moose calf can outrun an adult human. Fact, and elephants
are the only mammals on Earth that can’t jump.
I love you, which is not a fact but more like the way
my porcelain flower shifts its branches. I wish I could see it move
but it happens just as it does, without my watch, on top of the dresser.
Octopuses have three hearts, I keep some in a drawer. That is not a fact
but half a lie. A sea lion is the first nonhuman mammal with a proven ability
to keep a beat. A beautiful fact. I love the way you look at me
and your voice over the phone. Fact: A common garden snail has 14,000 teeth
which are called radula. We have held them in our hands, the snails,
after a day of pulling thistle. The gloves I wore sit on the dresser now,
with the jars of octopus hearts and the porcelain plant.
You are driving South until you will hit Tennessee, greens
like honeydew, emerald, moss, pear, pine—which the whole world hopes to be true.
Jolie Smith (they/them) is a writer currently living on the Puget Sound. Their work has been printed in Allegheny Review, on the Academy of American Poets website, and through their undergraduate literary magazine. They love to spend their day walking in forests or mountains, finding pockets of sun in the Pacific Northwest, and dreaming of their future dog named Trout. Follow them at @thehummusisout.