Alec Hershman
NATURAL SELECTION

The trees wave desperately to the storm-procession
like a pope-cloud has inspired them to send wind.
The size of the fury dwarfs us. And we not-
so-desperately have feet for scampering
and industry. This is how we’ve been lost
—as creatures—unwound on scented tracks.
The horses among us turn circles
around the spot where lightning starts.
Is this the replica? Puppets are ingesting
other puppets and the whole cast, it seems,
is strung on one string that runs gut to throat.
We are thimbles, once nested and now harassed
by a breeze. We are humans
and so are mutants for how we hear
a word in thunder, see the flash, and think
the string has raised us from our meal.

Alec Hershman is an English teacher living in Bangkok. He has received awards from the Kimmel-Harding-Nelson Center for the Arts, The Jentel Foundation, The St. Louis Regional Arts Commission, and The Institute for Sustainable Living, Art, and Natural Design. More of his poems are available in new issues of The Western Humanities Review, The Adroit Journal, Cimarron Review, Mantis, Bodega and online at alechershmanpoetry.com.

Read more from Cleaver Magazine’s Issue #11.