Monkey

I once saw a monkey jerking it.

It was at the zoo, of course, where several blue faced baboons swung over plaster tree trunks and romped across a funny little walkway modeled after a hanging bridge. As much as schools want zoo visits to be positive, educational experiences that transform the lives of young people forever, what has stuck with me in a lifetime's worth of field trips is deflated polar bears, hobbled cheetahs, and a monkey ignoring all the other monkeys to beat his meat.

 I think a lot about the animals in the zoo actually. Are they unhappy? I imagine it’s depressing to have your marrow-deep instincts defined by other, more intelligent creatures who not only decide your needs, but parcel, package, and portion them back to you with toys and treats. I wonder if zoo animals give a shit. Do they, bred in captivity, look at the multitudes roaring in at them, look at the frayed hemp ropes and fatuous innards of their enclosures and know in their soul that something is wrong?

Or am I simply anthropomorphizing them, attributing my human emotions to these citizens of plain, jungle, and ice flow? Maybe they don't know any better, and rending prey is not so different from being fed by hand. Can the cheetah long to run if he’s only ever paced?

I get home from work and have nothing but me time. I can watch whatever I want: makeup tutorials, ten ways to get him addicted to you, a review of the latest Disney venture. Two YouTubers I've never met give me both sides of an argument I am not a part of. It is very entertaining. Their videos are interrupted constantly by ads for wrinkle cream and home delivery cheeseburgers and cars that cost what I gross in a year.

 I go Incognito on Chrome. It only takes a minute.

Afterwards, I stare at the slant of my ceiling as the walls surrounding me bruise with twilight. My housemates are home–marked present and accounted for by the strips of light under their doors–but the living room and kitchen are as dark and empty now as they will be come midnight. Maybe I'll have a bath or drive down to the gas station for another pack of Camels, but probably I'll just roll to my side and see what's trending on Netflix and squint into the cold, blue light of my phone while my room slowly turns black around me.

Brittany Meador is a spoken word poet from the red rocks of Arizona. She is an amateur lexicographer who never met a word she didn’t love. You can find her most recent published work in the winter 2020 edition of the Sixfold Literary Journal.