Microfossil Exhibit Poem by Lisa Allen Ortiz

What's the difference
between this stuff and sand?
Here, the collector said and handed

the curator a battered box of slides:
the Infrakingdom Rhizaria,
the Kingdom Protozoa,

an exhibit of orbs and puffs,
half-moons, gritty lines,
squinty burrs in constellations.

I also shed foolishness,
ghost prints in caves, drafts, lettered
margins, pinched and crumpled bits.

A universe made of marks,
and in the still museum
such small wanting

to be handled, seen and noted:
frozen luster, what's left of cells.