CLOACAL KISS

Mid-February and the red-tails
and red-shoulders dance across
the sky, shouting kiah, kiah
birdtalk for “look at me, look at me”.
A pick-up bar in a cobalt
sky, with raptors circling and
chanting “hey baby, hey baby”.

Mating is a cloacal kiss
an uninspired and rapid
act of amour — white-bread sex —
butts touching for just a few
seconds, male on the female’s back
bending downward bussing his
cloaca with hers, and the next
generation is off to the races.

Cloaca, ancestral orifice,
a single opening for genital
and excretory pores. Birds, fish,
snakes and amphibians.

Which reminds me of the old adage
that humans must have been designed
by an engineer, because only an
engineer would have put the sewage
treatment plant adjacent to the
amusement park.

Gary D. Grossman
Medusa’s Kitchen, 10–18–23