What’s It Like To Be a Guinea Pig?

by Constantine Contogenis

for Thomas Nagel

Let your child play with death: a pet loses fur,
stops whistling for spinach, stops the funny
running for life, the hiding under a couch.
And it dies with dignity, found in its plastic house

ready for the vet’s small furnace. It felt pain,
of course, mammals do; and looked sick
and tired, for a while. But all without self-pity —
what would be the evolutionary gain?

When the surviving guinea pig sprawled
for two days in front of the dead one’s empty blue
plastic dome, you might’ve assumed the same cause.
But the pig returned home, again whistled for food,

again fled for cover. Did you wonder, had this guinea pig
been mourning for his lover, his aging friend and guide?
Of course such words do cause some a brief quiver.
But how pitiful, you might have cried.

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Constantine Contogenis

Constanstine Contogenis’s collection Ikaros (Word Press, 2004) won a First Prize “Open Voice Poetry Award” from Writer’s Voice. He co-translated Songs of the Kisaeng: Courtesan Poetry of the Last Korean Dynasty (BOA Editions, 1997). His work appears in Joining Music with Reason: 34 Poets, British and American: Oxford 2004-2009, chosen by Christopher Ricks (2011), and Pomegranate Seeds: An Anthology of Greek-American Poetry, ed. Dean Kostos (2008). He has been published in numerous journals including Whiskey Island, Hayden’s Ferry Review, MAYDAY Magazine, Paris Review, Pequod, TriQuarterly, Chicago Review, Cimarron Review, Crazyhorse, Asian Pacific American Journal, Literary Imagination, Lullwater Review, MacGuffin, Meridian Anthology, Western Humanities Review, Poetry East, New Orleans Review, NY Quarterly, Nimrod, Red Wheelbarrow, South Carolina Review, Water-Stone, Westview, Worcester Review, Grand Street, and Yale Review. His work was also featured by Poetry Society of America’s Poetry in Motion program. He is a fellow with Incite @ Columbia University and lives with his wife in Manhattan.

Vol. 7 No. 1

Summer 2024

What’s It Like To Be a Guinea Pig?