Conformation Show

The day my appendix burst
in an explosion deep within my guts
it all became perfectly clear:
I was being disqualified.

I spent the following weeks
recovering in my partner’s apartment,
kept company by (and cleaning up after)
Fig Newton, his spoiled Peke-a-poo.

I’d long been suspicious of theories
of genetic mutation, of evolution.
The randomness was too terrifying,
the odds of survival too slim.
I mean, what if the genetic quirk
that was meant to further the species
is embedded in the DNA of a child
whose skull gets split like a melon
by a Janjaweed lawnmower blade?

No, life could not have progressed
were it so dependent
on such dumb luck. Someone must be
guiding us along, just as whimsical humans
bred this snuffling mutt, molding its form
over generations to encourage
those bulging beetle eyes, that hairy monkey mug.
So must God have prodded us along, bred us
from primordial shrew to shit-strewing primate,
weeding out the less impressive specimens
until he arrived at us, his flat-faced, bipedal pets.

And what of my appendix, that fleshy morsel
formerly nestled in my guts?
Consider it not the remnant
of some once-important organ,
but an auto-destruct button, engineered
specifically to be pressed
(if all else fails; the impotence, the cancer)
by his fickle finger
to keep me from passing on
my ears, my nose, my double-helixed looks,

merely because they don’t quite conform
to his mysterious standards of beauty.