Worth Repeating by Matthew Byrne

As we speak two scientists kneel before
the cloned cerebral cortex of a dictator

who at birth demanded his umbilical cord

be preserved and encased for exhibit,

so that when his people became his people

they could see even he once needed someone,

which divines him power in a post-Darwinian,

semi-random selection sort-of-way, an elephant
squashing a dung beetle during an oblivious trot
toward the lion’s den: an unconvincing analogy
at best, but delivered with the eerie resolve
of a man who’d skin someone alive
for an answer certainly begotten otherwise
(a trait these scientists will chalk up

to historical climate, an itchy uniform,

and a haunting suspicion that life springs from

and returns to a vast, mechanical nothingness).