A Lovely Kind of Chaos

“The Galveston Island canids are not conventional coyotes — at least, not entirely. They carry a
ghostly genetic legacy: DNA from red wolves, which were declared extinct in the wild in 1980.”
--Emily Anthes, The New York Times

Throw the carrot colored scruff
& bleached jaw & hunter’s carnivorous
trigger finger into the beaker &
stir with a rifle for best resurrection
results. Every hunter is an evolutionary
biologist, just on the wrong side
of science after the last red wolf
howled goodbye & the haint of smoke
haunts the airport parking lot
where his canid descendants roam.
Scientists believe hybrid breeding
will set the test tube red wolves up
for survival, but I’m not too sure.
We love a revival, but will the encore
cast meet the same extinct end?
The ghost alleles can’t cure
the farmer’s fear for the livestock
he intends to eat or curb the tide’s
appetite as it encroaches on the old
hunting grounds. We humans role play
as God to ease the guilt of extinction,
but we only admire resilience so long
as we control it.

***

Adrianna Gordey (she/her) is a writer based in Manhattan, Kansas. When she isn't writing poetry, Adrianna can be found daydreaming about the Atlantic ocean, assembling overly ambitious Halloween costumes, or reading young adult fiction. Her poetry has previously appeared in Lammergeier, the Connecticut River Review, the Poeming Pigeon, and Passengers Journal; it is forthcoming in Touchstone Literary Magazine.