Naked Mole Rat

While reading dense black text

in JAMA, I flip a page and find

a photo that can only be a semi-erect

pink penis emerging from a black pudendum.

But on inspection, this one has a human face

with beady black eyes, a Hitler moustache,

and incisors sharp enough to chew down

a Christmas tree, an alert little guy who

looks like he has a penis’s one track mind.

The caption says scientists sequenced

his genome, which may reveal secrets

about why he stays fertile until death,

doesn’t age and never gets cancer,

which naked mole rats resist like

Japanese soldiers defending Iwo Jima.

And though I’ve been warned

since adolescence never to let my pecker

do my thinking, I’m glad we’re studying

this one, a lusty, almost immortal guy

living in his dark tunnels of love.