Derek White
 

Exorcising to
Hippopotamus
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

They’re jogging in locomotive serenity beneath the surface, while I spin a thin white line on a stationary bike five stories up from 86th and Lex   sounding not too distant from porpoises through I-phones, over the grinding sirens regressing out to graze on the grassy banks beneath the ruminating savannah moon   I’d like to think my pedaling powers their all-knowing smile permitting fish to dart in and out and clean their protuberant teeth (to a hyena, a bulging ribcage glistening from the shore)   a symbiotic relationship, feeding off clumpy organic chards from the hippo 4-chambered stomach underneath the minty-metallic severance I can smell Papaya King’s infamous hot dog remnants   this morning, flamboyant religious leaders in front of the UN detained my wife from reaching NYU Medical on the M15 she tells me I slept on my head wrong after feeding me ramen noodles before bed   I spin the zoetrope  going deliberately nowhere a slow-burning histolysis of my pancreas as it jostles and slithers inside   fueled by barley water in a clear bottle  in a brown paper bag, in the back of a black town car on the way to Shea Stadium during the 5th inning where hippos crush peanut shell fibers underfoot   dancing on the detached sodden turf of the hippodrome  the social hierarchy breaks down during drought  as they cluster and wallow in the thickening mud

  (c)Derek White 2004