Jai Hamid Bashir
In the Primate Room With the Beloved

Never did far away and true swim so near. To almost touch
behind glass over grassgreen scents of animals,
shivering blackstems of fur. Eulemur macaco. We do planetary orbit

around enclosures. My Beloved holds my hand
with instinctual warmth. Lydekkerianus malabaricus. Unpercise fingers
groom
hair deep in shared touch. We move closer. A Gibbon looks back:
pupils suffused with smaller moons. Hoolock hoolock. Reaching arms

out like infant Hanuman to eat sunskins. Then, a litter of mimics
join in plainsong babble—monkey verses through mossputrid nave.

In my drawings they look like babies I’ve known born with sad eyes.
In The Ram