Slugs Have Teeth, and Other Useless Facts
I worry I don’t worry enough about things that happen
without my notice, the way more mushrooms
are blooming from my butterfly garden, looking magical
even when they’re not magical, and some have small tooth
marks from slugs feeding at night. Yes, slugs have teeth,
thousands in fact. In fact slugs have more teeth than sharks
but aren’t as dangerous, even though most sharks
aren’t actually dangerous, even though they’re attacking
more this summer than any summer on record, but also
they’re dying or disappearing, so dying off, also in record numbers,
so maybe like the orcas who sank yachts in Gibraltar—
they’re fighting back, the way any fish on the end of a line
will pull and thrash with all it’s got against the end of its life.
I release every fish I catch, but still lose sleep over it
because I know it’s cruel to make them think the end is near,
work them to the edge of exhaustion then pull out the hook,
slip them back into water, and despite the news of wildfires,
glacial melt, floating islands of waste, we’re not yet afraid
for our lives like a hooked fish, so I can’t help but wonder
what our last hopeless fits will be, when we can actually see
the edge we’re going over, the nothing waiting for us
after the sharks and orcas have lost, the last monarchs
not returned from their Mexican winter, even the worries
that keep me up, not enough to keep up with everything.
Grant Clauser’s sixth poetry book, Temporary Shelters, is forthcoming from Cornerstone Press. His poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Greensboro Review, Kenyon Review, and other journals. He’s an editor for a national media company and teaches poetry at Rosemont College in Pennsylvania.
Header photo by Gabriela Fink, courtesy Pixabay. Photo of Grant Clauser by Alex Cope.
