SELF-PORTRAIT IN A PETRI DISH

 

Maybe it’s true, as they say,

That my totem animal is the amoeba

 

Loose of edge but with a nucleus of sorts

Like my totem, I lost my phylum at the waning

 

Of the twentieth century as the system

Took a closer look into the petri dish

 

Stealthily darting around on my pseudopod

One step ahead of natural selection

 

My wall-less-ness inspires dread

And repudiation for the abomination

 

Of unpredictability and unnameability

Insufficient assurances for the archive

 

A pariah to the mapping drive

My permeable I slithers yet persists

 

And resists, combines, fuses and refuses

Jollyful sedimentation into a new geological Era.

 

Pina Piccolo, Imola, June 30, 2024

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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