Sloths digest so slowly they starve
on full stomachs. So slow, they go
unnoticed by predators, until they leave
their tree once a week
to poop—that’s when most die, squatting over
vegetation. Day-blind, near-deaf, they’re almost
dead. Moss grows on their fur while beetles
and cockroaches make a home
on their skin. It is also a fact that you and I
are the type of animals who sleep
like sloths when the sun is up but unlike sloths
feel bad about it. We are the animals
of bad-feeling. Awake till noon, I watch
lunch-takers and mail carriers from my bedroom
window before pulling the blinds. The insomniac sees
between the cracks in daylight. The captive
sloth clutches a stuffed animal in absence of a cecropia
or a mother. My mother is home, my skin
is clean, and the birds outside
sing. Still, I cling.
–
Claire Denson is a staff poetry reader for The Adroit Journal and holds a B.A. from University of Michigan and an M.F.A. from UNC Greensboro, where she served as editorial intern for The Greensboro Review. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Massachusetts Review, Sporklet, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, The Summerset Review, and Hobart, among others.