planet of the anglerfish

by Fred Aiken

my wife refuses to watch the planet of the apes movies with me,
though she won’t tell me exactly why,
rather she just tells me that she doesn’t like the idea
of apes and primates taking over the world,
the idea sounds too farcical,
which i tell her that’s kinda the point,
but personally i wish that when they rebooted the franchise
ten years ago, that those hollywood executives and creatives
would have chosen a different species this go around
to become the dominant species of earth,
like what would it look like if anglerfish
were to suddenly march up from out of the
deep, dark blue
and organize an interspecies rebellion against their human overlords,
perhaps the we’ll never know