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The Pedestal Magazine > Archives > ISSUE FORTY-THREE: Dec (07)-Feb (08) > Poetry >Caridad McCormick - What You Called to Say at Lunch

"Nine fossilized teeth found in Ethiopia are from a previously unknown species of great ape."
–USA Today


Your message spoke of a lost species
so old it had grown new again. Great apes
that ruled Ethiopia ten million years ago,
terrible teeth giving pause to science,
things we thought we knew about origins and limits.
I understood then why it took so long to find you,
why it took years to sort through variables,
identify the longing, harness it into tools
I needed to break it all down, fossils giving way
to answers, like the bones of that gorilla,
buried for eons, glorious, finally found.









Caridad McCormick has published poetry in numerous journals, including The Seattle Review, CALYX, Slipstream, Spillway, and MiPoesias. She is a 2007 recipient of a Florida Artist Fellowship. In 2006 she was a finalist for the Rita Dove Poetry Award. She is a Professor of English at Miami Dade College in Miami, FL, where she resides.
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