Responding to a poem in the New Yorker for Pat

Poached Irony

Science now says memory changes our genes

are we elephants, we never forget?

there where elephants go to die

the fabled storehouse of all ivory past

is it in our tusks, that knowledge?

I seem to have forgotten

but the word ivory, and I see a Great Aunt

watching Liberace on a tiny black and white screen

inside a large wooden cabinet

"tinkle the ivory"

so many decades ago

is it the tiny black and white screen streaming video

to my phone makes me an elephant?

Show me the graveyard

for that irony

needs to die.

By Phil Specht on Mar 13, 2010

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http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/poetry/2010/03/15/100315po_poem_ras