Bodies in Northern Africa
They say the first Homo-sapiens
were unearthed in deep Ethiopia
about 200,000 years ago. Word is
we are descendants
of one genetic mitochondria, burnt ember
of carbon caramelized in an hominid’s fossil.
One nation under a groove.
*
I stumbled across my first dead body
in a mass grave called America, Chene St.,
in my early summer of ’93.
There were no Palestine paleontologists
standing in the background trying
to explain the Orrorin Tugenesis to Mono
Naledi—before hu-mans were a complex web.
It was just me innocently greeting death
soft as wet soil, the lean of grass
like crowds surrounding the uninhabited.
I kept my 7-year-old head tilted
as if the entire world threw me a curve ball
and if I was going to get it right
I had to be at the exact angle, at
the exact person's posture before it
crossed into cuneiform script.
**
Homo-erectus skulls are
much larger than the bipedal ape
but still chimp-like as they learn fire
and smear ochre on their faces
with assimilation cloaking their skulls.
Further research on the first upright species
showed that they too buried their own dead,
opposing what archaeologists wrote about them.
***
In that sideways gulp
of rotation, I saw the pants pockets
inside out—like a dog's tongue tasting warm air.
The swelling and smell of body—
licking itself, trying to wake
the owner out of its somnolent burning.
I was trying to see where it all began,
clumped root pulled under fingernail,
swollen thumbs.
****
Humans developing from early primates
ain't my thing, never been
since I've learned about hominid theories.
Having an animalistic arc is the lower self
reacting upon the physical realm,
and maybe the body lying coolly on green damp grass
was reaction of impulse, a human
appetite to desire a thing unattainable
for the physical plane. And though
there weren't teeth marks or blood trails
drawn in rage—normal things
an animal would do to gnaw cartilage—
I could still see the tearing in the eye,
a looking back at me
as if I was the one wielding a second coming.