Unit 100

Layli Long Soldier reminds us that we have obligations to the mosquito. I scratch my spider bite,
chew on the fact that July 11th is World Horse Day. Funny that we have international day of the
cat,  national  llama  day,  international  crow and  raven  appreciation day.  Funny  that  it isn’t,
stalactite night of the bat.  Ocean epoch of the orca.  Galaxy eon of the tardigrade. Every unit of
time for  every living  creature  in every  possible  borderless  universe.  Every  mushroom,  every
sunflower,  every field.  Someone faced  the sun and  said,  let there  be a day.  And isn’t  it true a
universe  blooms every nanosecond? July 11th: the day  my  parents  and I flew with the birds on
China Eastern Airline to  Richmond  for the first time.  When I woke up I saw a large  dog—one
as large as me—for the   first time.  Large dogs who watched  the poet grow taller and taller, and
then stopped.  The  world knows its firsts  like its  thumb  and index  rubbing  themselves  into a
spark.  July 11th, another Gregorian  calendar day  in which  imperialist  doctors  threw  human
kindling into fire,  fire that trembled  at what it was made to do.  May there be a night, a day, an
entire  lunar  cycle,  two  thousand,  also,  for the non-human  marutas.  Horses, monkeys, goats,
sheep,  dogs, chicken, rats, fleas, ticks:  no zodiacs forgotten.  Give us a constellation for how the
rats  have  suffered,  too much,  in the name of progress, empire,  nibbling  away at the  unburied
dead—who  were  called  them.  Isn’t this  the  real  lesson  of  Phoebe  Gilman’s Something from
Nothing? Jillian Jigs and the wonderful guinea pigs. In Germany, their statue “pays tribute to the
animals  that have, and continue to donate their lives to save” everyone  else’s.  Who tallies these
savings?  A monument  is but a  punish of stones. Stones who  would rather be  thrown at a tank.
Rat root works.  Won’t there be seven generations for the rat root,  for the devil’s club, and seven
generations after that.  The mice that nibble at the  margins of the book. Do not live so that some
of us may have our days. Do not die for no rhyme, no reason at all.