“Triceracopter,” a life-sized statute of a dinosaur-helicopter hybrid, lives in the University of Cincinnati Library. It was created by Patricia Renick, built out of a helicopter used and scarred in the Vietnam War.
There’s a dinosaur in the library protesting the war.
He’s been there since the start, before I was born, holding
his placard, telling people about helicopters and the burn rate
of napalm compared to the secrets of marrow. You can eat marrow, he says,
because he’s a dinosaur and there’s a limit to how much anything changes.
Anyway, he’s old now, broken down, battered down like the placard he took
with him to the graveyards where his buddies sleep under flags. I left a wreath once,
I have walked there, too. I have held the placards for the napalm and the burn pits in
their time. And now we are in the library protesting the war, walking back extinction,
surrounded by ghosts, and we are facing the bang yet again, the big one. It’s white phosphorous
and drones today another school bombed, a kid hanging in pieces from a wall. You can eat the
marrow, the dinosaur says. Not me, I’m an herbivore now, but you look like you know a thing or
two about biting down. I know a thing or two about graveyards, I say. Now I am in the library
protesting the war. Now I am in the library. Now I am naming genocide. Now I am.