Jim Tsinganos © 2022
by Susan Cohen
Science News: Dung Beetles Navigate by
Storing Star maps in their brains
I ached to teach them how to navigate. I read news to them about the emerging science of emotions. I wrote in a poem, I have no answers for my children, when I should have said: Oh, my little beetles, learn to dance on the dung heap and practice your cartography. You might discover you were born knowing how to steer—by sun or moon—through hazardous geographies.
Science News: Dogs Were Domesticated Once
from a Lost Population of Wolves
Old friend, chowing down your easy supper, dream-twitching on your doggy bed, better if you had bared your teeth, cornered and devoured us early, before we swallowed forests, ripped the flesh off mountains, bloodied earth entire. Better if you’d domesticated us before we turned into this lost population of wolves.
Susan Cohen is the author of Throat Singing, A Different Wakeful Animal, and the forthcoming Democracy of Fire. Her recent poetry appeared in 32 Poems, Northwest Review, Prairie Schooner, The Southern Review, and won prizes from Red Wheelbarrow and Terrain.org. She lives in Berkeley.