Get
To Know
|
 The
Squirrel Monkey weighs up to about 1 kg. They live in primary and
secondary forests and cultivated areas. Disturbed habitats are advantageous
because of their greater supply of preferred food - insects (such as grasshoppers)
and fruit. They rarely travel on the ground and are most active in the
morning and late afternoon. They have large group sizes (40 - 70 individuals)
in continuous forest. They are non-aggressive and egalitarian - neither
males nor females appear to be dominant. Females are usually the ones
who disperse to another troop. The Central American squirrel monkey has
always been restricted to the Pacific lowlands of Costa Rica and Panama.
They have already declined drastically due to clearing of forests. Currently,
deforestation and habitat fragmentation due to agriculture and tourism
development are the major causes of decline. Insecticide spraying, the
pet trade and electrocution from electric power lines have also adversely
affected these squirrel monkeys.
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I'm difficult to fit
With my sunken chest, skinny
arms
And a waist longer around
than
A three foot measure, but Nordstrom's
I discovered makes a perfect
shirt
At least for me
Don't ask me how I found out:
Okay, someone bought me one
Of their shirts as a gift
and it settled
Over me like fog on an English castle
So I threw out all my old shirts,
went on-line and ordered
Every color of their smart
care
Wrinkle free Hong Kong creations
To be sent here to me in Tucson
My little home from where
I try to fight
Global warming, fossil fuel
emissions
Always trying to tighten that footprint
Of humanity, but my shirts came:
In cardboard boxes made from
Endangered forests; gently
wrapped
In plastic drawn from the bowels of the earth; and,
Enough pins to forge an axe. The material was of
the finest Pima cotton, grown
and harvested
Right down the street from
me, flown
To Hong Kong, turned into fabric and from
Fabric, into my shirts, which were shipped…
Oh my God
Do you see where this is going?
Do you see where my shirts have been?
I love my smart care pin-striped shirts
But they make a mockery of
my principles
And I cringe at their air
miles
But they do settle on me soft as alpaca
And Nordstrom's sells these
Extraordinary alpaca scarves
I wouldn't even dare hang in my closet
Would I?
Burgess Needle is a Tucson writer whose work has appeared
in Under the Radar (UK), Decanto (UK), Brittle Star
(UK), Blackbox Manifold (UK), Concho River Review, Raving
Dove, Centrifugal Eye, Iodine, Full of Crow, Kritya (India), Gutter
Eloquence, Origami Condom and Red Fez. His fiction has
appeared in BlackMarket Review (UK), 10,000 Tons of Black
Ink and Connotation Press. He taught English for two years in
the Peace Corps [Thailand, 1967-1969], been a co-director of the Southern
Arizona Writing Project, co-published and edited Prickly Pear
/ Tucson [a poetry quarterly] for five years, and was a school librarian
for thirty years. Diminuendo Press published his first collection
of poetry: EVERY CROW IN THE BLUE SKY.See: http://www.everycrowinthebluesky.com
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The
Squirrel Monkey
- Issue Ten