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maybe rhesus, maybe wooly
monkey leaping vine
to tortuous vine
inside the cortex
chittering
like a fishwife
scold
in billingsgate
maybe a gueron
monkey in the brain’s
arbor
of branching dendrites,
prehensile and hanging
by tail
downside-up,
gibbering
like a bedlam
halfwit,
maybe a howler
monkey shrieking
through cerebral
jungles of neurons, maybe
capuchin or ring-tail
monkey enamored
of racket,
maybe a spider
monkey
spitting seeds
of ideas, scratching
and tumbling
through my head,
furry adrenaline-pumped
olympian,
maybe proboscis
or trunk-monkey
loudly protesting
confinement
in the skull’s
littered cage, its tail
thrashing—
sometimes the monkey-house
din, sometimes the brain’s
primate roar,
its rainforest chatter
till I inhale,
exhale:
monkey
hush
now.