Nancy Young
Naked Mole Rats in the Pandemic
Immobile under a stay-at-home order?
Try tuning in the Smithsonian special
on naked mole rats. They’ll draw you,
as anything naked can. Marvel
how they live thirty years below ground,
led by their queen, also naked, and a mole rat.
Watch how, when she dies, females fight
to be the next Queen of Naked Mole Rats.
Warn them: This is not worth dying for.
If you survive, you’ll reign over
only naked mole rats.
They will not listen.
Still they’ll tussle, then grow wrinkled
as they hunker blindly in their burrows.
—Submitted on 07/03/2020
Nancy Young is the author of The Last Girl Standing (Finishing Line Press, 2013), as well as three novels. Her poems and stories have appeared in Belle Reve, Flying South, Fresh, Iodine, Kakalak, and other journals. A former reporter, newspaper editor, and college educator, she now watches birds at her feeder, placates her basset hounds, and writes whatever she wants.
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