Poems by Morgan Smith

Dinosaurs and IVF or Being Queer and Having Kids in the Apocalypse

by Morgan Smith

From Canary Winter 2024-25

M. Rose writes in the desert— for now. They are surrounded by saguaros and cactus wrens, big blue skies and sunlight so bright, it turns everything a washed-out shade of white.

In two organs the size of a walnut, I have 200,000 eggs. They have lived inside me for longer than I have lived. Since I was, according to the internet, the size of a grapefruit, a banana, a troll doll. Then, at 20 weeks old, there were 7 million of them, a New York City’s worth of half-me’s, midtown and skyscrapers and crisscrossed bridges, commutes and matinees of me’s, snowy-window Christmas dinners of me’s, a tableful of me’s at Sardi’s, waiting for the review of my new play, written by my worst critic— me. It is this image that ashes through my mind the first time you make a joke about how much sunscreen our kids will need, the laughter, and then the realization. That our children will be ours, ours, but not made of the two of us. A New York City’s worth of me’s pressing their faces to the glass, seeing only a reflection. A city of faces looking out and seeing nothing.

weeks. When I was halfway through becoming a being that could breathe air and open my eyes, I carried already these 7 million possibilities, floating in the natal darkness of a woman in a small wintery town. For twenty weeks, it was all of us in there, considering whatever was to be considered then. Once, I was one of 7 million possibilities my mother held, as my grandmother held her. And so it goes, back and back, and in this way, we have all known countries we never set foot in, lived fights we didn’t flinch from, dreamed, inside a dream, inside a dream.

160

million years ago, the dream begins, just as Pangaea begins to drift apart. It begins in Jurassic-era China, with a shrew named Juramaia. At just under three inches long, the average size of a man’s thumb, or the size of a bumblebee hummingbird, Juramaia is the first mammal to give birth. She does this alone, in a burrow, without knowing what will happen to her.

million years ago, the Maiasaura lives in what is now called Montana. She is an elegant dinosaur, with a long, sloping neck, a broad mouth, often greened and pollen-dusted from grazing on wildflowers, and wet, soulful eyes. This is an embellishment on my part—we cannot actually know what the dinosaur's eyes looked like. But Maiasaur was a plant eater, a herd animal, the aunty-in-spirit of the cow, the deer, the manatee. I don't need a fossil record to know she had kind eyes.

185

million years ago, a mother is in Arizona. She is Kayentatherium, a thing between many things. A mammal-like reptile, or reptile-like mammal. Semi-aquatic. Semi-mammalian. We know that she loved to swim. To climb the arches. Maybe to look at the sky. I tell myself I know her, because I too live here and love those things. When we find her, 185 million years later, it is from her footprints. Too deep in the mud, trying desperately to escape a rising river. Too deep, for her bodyweight. Too deep, we know, once we find the body, because she died carrying her 38 babies on her back. I realize I don’t know her at all.

years ago, you and I have the first conversation about children. It is mostly a catalogue of maybes. Maybe we want them, maybe we don’t. Maybe we couldn’t afford them. Maybe we could. Maybe we want to stay forever this way, coming and going as we please.

30,000

dollars. The price of in-vitro fertilization. In-vitro, In Vitrum, in glass. The fragile weight of a vital future and the price of clarity.

years ago, we wonder. What if you carried them. What if I did. What if they inherited your headaches, your grandmother’s cancer. What if we used my genes. What if we couldn’t afford it. What if we saved. What if we couldn’t save them from what was coming.

million years ago, Maiasaura is living in a green valley, near what will someday be called Choteau, Montana. She has never seen a human being, and we will never see her, because one day (before there are days of the week, or even months, when the sun and its turning really is the only calendar), one day, an asteroid the size of Mount Everest will careen into the Yucatán Peninsula going 100,000 kilometers per hour, releasing a detonating force equivalent to 10 billion atomic bombs.

1.7

million years ago, a hand— fingers that could clasp mine, the instep of a wrist I would recognize— finds fire. Finds fire the way one might say you find yourself. The discovery of something that has always been there, waiting to be known. We find fire. The bomb, again.

1712

A man named Thomas learns about re. Coal, and combustion, and steam, and movement. He says the word engine, runs his hands along the black seams of history and makes choices. He dreams to life a world of ships like skywhales and skies emptied of stars. Or perhaps he simply dreams dinner, bed, wife. I am inclined to believe the best, even if I know the ending.

300

million years ago, swamps swath the world in a wet embrace, and mosses tall as trees lay down and dream of Thomas.

billion tons of carbon, this year alone, but I struggle to imagine it. 37 billion tons of carbon, from

52.86

billion tons of coal, from forest land, from what was once

550,625,000

square miles of forest, covering roughly

2.797

Earths.
I still can’t imagine it.

2020

When we talk about children— over breakfast eaten on the floor, watching nature documentaries, in the car on the way to wait, masked, in the parking lot of a grocery store, in bed, in the dark, in the silences between passing cars, what we come back to is this: how can we bring them into this world.

This world in which Australia burns, California burns, Russia burns, this world in which I call myself an environmentalist. I’m a vegan. I take the bus. I recycle. But there’s still a part of me, the part of me nestled close to my granny’s granny’s granny, that looks at you and wants to know what your eyes would look like, gazing up from a little potential. Our maybe. A baby who is already contained in me, or you, but who cannot be in both of us. And yet, a baby that is still possible, the doctors say. The strangeness of it all, to be the rst of our kind. A new plot point on the evolutionary tree. Our generation, the first to be able to dream of this glass-creation, this reflective intervention in what is simple for everyone else. Our eggs in a nest of reflection, our me’s staring out the window, our faces pressed against the glass. Unimaginable to the past. One hundred years ago, or eighty years ago, or fifty years ago, it would not be possible, what we are considering. The choice we have available. And there is no question: for us, it is a choice. We are not afforded the luxury of an accident.

667

trees. Per person. Per year. 667 trees breathing away on a mountaintop somewhere, to drink in the effects of our life. Our trips to the movies. Our avocados. Our doctors’ appointments. What do I say to that. What is a maybe worth. What are 667 trees worth. What am I paying with. How far do I sit from the end of the dream. How long until the re goes out.

∞

time. Mythic time. Time not as a line, but as a fabric, your sweatshirt bundled up and tossed in the corner. As liquid, the teacup at your bedside. As present, as in gift, as in I am bumping into you the night we met, I am sleeping, always on the left, I am walking down the aisle again, and again and I am in kindergarten, saying I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up yet, but that I still have time. As cycle, you bleeding then me, me bleeding then you. As spiral, the pattern on the belly of the tadpoles I saved from puddles when I was still close enough to my mother to remember darkness. Time as again, and again, and again. Am I willing to be an ending.

In mythic time, I am already being eaten. I have crawled into the nest of a grave, I am smiling to the earthy stars with a mossy tombstone of herbivore teeth as worms learn the crests of my body. I am at peace, finally, already, just glad to be of use. To stop consuming. The worms learn me, as you once did.

In mythic time, the ghost of Maiasaura is in my t-shirt. It makes sense that we are all made of each other. I drive to a doctor’s appointment, the engine a swarm of plankton and the deep places of the earth, re.

In mythic time, my question is no question. There is just the stretch in all directions, an unbroken line, not straight, but stitching, bringing me together again and again with all my thanksgivings, giving thanks to Juramaia, to Westlothiana, to Icthyostega and Agnatha and Cyanobacteria. Thank you for lungs, I say as the asteroid looms. Thank you for teeth. For hips. For blood, for bleeding. For sight and all the things we see. Thank you, living breathing endless pieces that brought me to this maybe. The world is burning.

nests. In a valley in Montana, there are 43 nests.

We know about the Maiasaura, because of the picture they left us. The Pompeian lovers. The moment of impact. 43 nests, raised berms of earth in perfect circles. Inside them, eggs. Delicate. Unbroken. Eggs, complete with translucent, unfinished bones inside, even though

million years ago, a stone breaks the silence. Craters the earth. It is heard around the world, ash of light, wall of water, rock-strewn sky. A curtain of re crosses the continent faster than a fighter jet, arrives, less than an hour later, at the Maiasaura and her nest.

Maiasaura climb atop the small craters, the berms, their worlds. They lay down, smooth bellies to the earth. Above, stones re-enter the atmosphere at speeds faster than the fastest bullet we have created, it begins to rain re. But to the little ones— with the cool, familiar bulk of their mothers between them and the world, the known darkness of the nest, the pattering of this fiery rain thrumming through the earth— to them, it feels no different than a summer thunderstorm. Seems, for the longest time, as though it will pass.

2023

We have already chosen names, though I don’t know if we will use them.

million years later, a Paleontologist finds them, hundreds of them, the first dinosaur eggs to have survived the weight of the world ending, time and time again. They wonder at the sight of the unbroken shell, the smooth marvel of an ending and a beginning, the way you can hold an unfulfilled potential in the palm of your hand. They debate genus, species, phylum, and in the end, a name is chosen.

They name her Maiasaura. The good mother.