Poem-A-Day: Tina Chang, The Future is an Animal

	September 6, 2012 Today's poem is copyright 2012 by Tina Chang. Used with permission of the author. More from this author Other Chang Poems Birth Celestial Duality Evolution of Danger Infinite and Plausible You can unsubscribe from our Poem-A-Day emails at at anytime—either completely, or until next April. Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane Suite 901 New York, NY 10038 212-274-0343 academy@poets.org		The Future is an Animal by Tina Chang In every kind of dream I am a black wolf careening through a web. I am the spider who eats the wolf and inhabits the wolf's body. In another dream I marry the wolf and then am very lonely. I seek my name and they name me Lucky Dragon. I would love to tell you that all of this has a certain ending but the most frightening stories are the ones with no ending at all. The path goes on and on. The road keeps forking, splitting like an endless atom, splitting like a lip, and the globe is on fire. As many times as the book is read, the pages continue to grow, multiply. They said, In the beginning, and that was the moral of the original and most important story. The story of man. One story. I laid my head down and my head was heavy. Hair sprouted through the skin, hair black and bending toward night grass. I was becoming the wolf again, my own teeth breaking into my mouth for the first time, a kind of beauty to be swallowed in interior bite and fever. My mind a miraculous ember until I am the beast. I run from the story that is faster than me, the words shatter and pant to outchase me. The story catches my heels when I turn to love its hungry face, when I am willing to be eaten to understand my fate. Share Digg StumbleUpon Facebook E-mail to Friend