There is a Fossil in the Naturkundemuseum in Berlin

That is 500 million years old—little more

Than a fleck of yellow on stone, a sweetcorn husk capping

A tooth. It is a starfish’s predecessor— this mark what remains

of one long node, umbilical, stretching out from its more

substantial parts, latched on to embark outside of

Known time. Your body, upon seeing it, would have been

Torn between a sense of wonder, originating in your abdomen,

And your one wily fingernail’s compulsion to scratch it off, see

What flavour of power defacing makes. There are whole morbid aviaries

Of taxidermied birds in the Naturkundemuseum in Berlin; millenia

Of ammonites. You do not see them, though—you are too busy

With your minibar summonings, taking your mischief out

To dance in desolate industrial, finding scale or purpose

In redirecting or blowing neurons—you are too busy

Clinging to our old ways, collapsing the years’ millions

In front of me, into one shared vein of sabotage.

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Dylan McNulty-Holmes is a writer and editor who lives in Berlin. He is the author of the chapbook Survivalism for Hedonists (Querencia Press, 2023), and the longform digital poem Half a Million Mothers, which was shortlisted for the 2022 New Media Writing Prize. His writing has been illustrated and made into a T-shirt, live scored by a disco band, and translated into five languages. A Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, his work has appeared in journals including Split Lip, DIAGRAM, Puerto del Sol and The New Welsh Review. Find him at dylanmcnultyholmes.com.