“He wouldn’t make us like monkeys!”
says a student in the front row.
“‘Cause he made us in his image.”
She laughs and turns to check
for smiles and nods. The professor
stands by the whiteboard
where he has written the word
adaptation. He is thinking of all
the lessons, like similes,
that have appeared in black ink
across this space,
and that have, like species,
gone. He cannot help
but see her in the church van
on the field trip, pretending
she doesn’t know she’s the pretty one
who doesn’t know exactly
what’s happening inside the boy
beside her when she tosses
her pink-streaked hair and blows
a word across his ear. In the room’s silence,
she shows them what she means
by turning her hands into big ears
and wagging her head side to side.
They wonder if they are some sort
of experiment as their professor
turns off the lights and clicks
a chimp’s face onto the screen.
No one says a thing
at the god looking back
from those brown, sad eyes.