Eden Rumsey
He picks through detritus,
Gnarled theropod talons
Scraping against uniform bricklay.
He approaches them—
Those pig-kings—
And they gawk and coo, thinking him affectionate.
The tender-fleshed giants do not recognize
Only time saved them from
Fossil-age ravening.
They toss him a scrap from their troughs—
Life thrown away in careless excess—
And he snatches it off the ground.
Until the day his shriek again thunders in the marrow,
He will choke down bread begged from prey
And survive.
Eden Rumsey is a senior English major with a Creative Writing Certificate in Fiction at the University of Texas at Austin. She’s pursuing a career in the publishing or newspaper industries as a copy editor. When she’s not busy daydreaming about strange worlds, you can find her communing with the food court grackles or holed up in a dark corner of the library.
Hothouse 
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