B A R B A R A T O M A S H
6 poems
From Of Residue
Of Wildlife
scientists collect nets etherize the
bats extract blood from wings
the good they do for us in the
wild in rare cases spills over
between species our mother’s
interaction with the host discrete
passages abundant evidence to
kill pathogens boil camel’s milk
before drinking it we veer across
the street no longer place an arm
around our child but the real risk
the emergent risk can you
remember how to kiss or how
with fingers to spell nothing
Of Nocturnals
the virus is just really too good at
what it’s doing no human using a
computer could do this the palm
civet’s mask is white its feet
black I wish to say hello to you
clearly a natural process my
droplets my mist must have
occurred samples of bat blood
urine saliva and feces we have
been teaching people to plug
holes in their roofs to prevent
encroaching when we eat we
swallow large amounts of
livestock solitude re-infecting
ourselves the risk is clearly a
natural process that has occurred
the pangolin is the only mammal
with scales
Of Hypotheses
if residents must enter through
the roofs if under the floor a
honeycomb maze in which
disarticulated skeletons if the
bedroom door clicks shut and a
cat pounces a bird or a mouse if
an adult a child two infants have
attempted to overcome
marginality and edge then
language begins its eerie
vibrations in branches and leaves
and we dry out the trees so they
will burn quickly
Of Fallacy
if the burial hints at an emotional
bond between two people if
nearly everything that comes
afterwards including writing
cities population explosions
pandemics social inequality
traffic jams murals in red
pigment and ochre of vultures
swooping down on headless men
is in fact a symbol and has to be
deciphered then we will decipher
it if a set of implements is found
with a small scalpel to remove a
ring of bark then we will remove
it our squash plants will spread
along the ground blocking the
sunlight and the children in the
back seat are jumping up and
down
Of Sheltering
first to whittle down the
maddening myth of sufficient
insufficient knowledge first to
stitch up the seams of the four
cardinal predations carnivory
herbivory whether or not it
results in death parasitism
mutualism first to burn out
trees clustered in ghostly rows
in order to disappear compress
unravel extract and restrict a
species with roots in the
moment someone first decided
to shelter with someone else
Of Ceremony
first to twirl and flex but not to
extend a leg out from the
body’s midline to subsist as
you while I subsist as I one
foot chasing the other in the
atomized air of our close
proximity first to betray
someone at times even our
erstwhile parasites by
capturing them in a too-small
jar first to retreat leap away
from the location of plants and
animals endangered but still
decipherable
Barbar Tomash
Barbara Tomash is the author of four books of poetry: PRE- (Black Radish Books 2018), Arboreal (Apogee 2014), The Secret of White (Spuyten Duyvil 2009), and Flying in Water, winner of the 2005 Winnow First Poetry Award. An earlier version of PRE- was a finalist for the Colorado Prize and the Rescue Press Black Box Poetry Prize. Before her creative interests turned her toward writing she worked extensively as a multimedia artist. Her poems have appeared in Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Web Conjunctions, New American Writing, Verse, VOLT, OmniVerse, and numerous other journals. She lives in Berkeley, California, and teaches in the Creative Writing Department at San Francisco State University.