Poems by Cara Stoddard

Incertae sedis

by Cara Stoddard

From Canary Winter 2019-20

Cara lives along Thornton Creek, a creek managed by the Muckleshoot Indian counsel, home to glacial erratics, newts, herons, spawning salmon, sword ferns, and western red cedar. 90% of the creek that was once an invisible, subterranean network of cement culverts has been "daylighted." Thornton Creek drains into Lake Washington, a part of the Cedar River watershed.

enigmatic taxa
platypus duckweed oleander
bucking neat conformity
straddling categorization

we think we know
what we can never know
from ultrasound
from chromosomes
from what it takes to orgasm

in my driveway
Oregon juncos eat millet
side-by-side the slate-gray race

Mayr said you can still be a species
long distance
across mountain ranges
or whole oceans
as long as when you find each other
you breed

I think of you in your EMT uniform
shoveling gravel out of the bed of your truck
mucking stalls
digging up blackberry
born daughter sister girlchild
you were always your father’s best son

of uncertain placement
The American Ornithological Society
placed the turkey vulture with the falcons
and then with the storks
and then by itself:
Cathartiformes

problematica dresser
boxer briefs lumped
with the sports bras
flamingoes
where there had been loons.