Orangutan
By Matt Haver
Art by Arna Miller
Published Issue 139, July 2025
Yesterday
in the bath
I waited for the water to drain
and caught my reflection
in the convex overflow plate.
Between the foreshortening
the reflection
the nudity
the relaxed pose
I’ll be damned if one of our arboreal cousins
wasn’t sitting there in the suds
gazing back at me.
Albeit short on body hair
bereft of orange locks
and superhuman strength.
But there he sat
an animal we share 97 percent
of our humanity with.
Humanity.
If only.
It got me thinking.
Perhaps the next time we visit
the zoo
we should spend some time
before the bars of the ape enclosure
and beg their opinion
on the West Bank
where their more advanced relatives
murder women and children and the elderly
by the score
over Bronze Age myths
to prove whose god is holier
by the number of holes
shot into hospitals.
Or show them a map
of the hundreds of schools
in the good old USA
that righteous, land
where children kill children
with weapons of war
while the adults look on
with long faces
offering those cheap
thoughts and prayers
equating to nothing
but lazy
self-righteous
hot air
and argue over the books
in the library.
Maybe the zookeeper
will let their charges out
for a little field trip
to the zoo parking lot
where ego and hubris and stupidity
have led to
gargantuan
ugly
wasteful
vehicles
and drivers so smug
they advertise their contribution to
overpopulation
with tiny images
of the exact firearms being used
to murder and maim
at the school
down the road
and en masse
worlds away.
I stared hard at my reflection
and thought of how ridiculous I looked.
But certainly not as ridiculous
as a species
bent on its own self-destruction.
A species
who wouldn’t offer another
of their kind
a banana
if they were starving
but of a different
race
color
orientation
gender
or creed
and would instead prefer
to turn that fruit around
miming our favorite phallic fetish
aim it at the other’s head
and pull the trigger
then drop the peel on the floor
for the future
to slip on.
Matt got his start behind a microphone as a college student talk-show host at 89.3 FM KUGS, Western Washington University, in Bellingham. He spent the rest of the 2000’s as a host, producer, and voice talent at the Cascade Radio Group and Fisher Broadcasting and from 2020-2023, produced and co-hosted Heilman & Haver – The Stage & Screen Podcast with over 70 episodes and interviews, dozens of video segments, and many live appearances around the Pacific Northwest. Matt performed Breaking Into Sunlight by John Cochran with Cedar House Audio Productions for Hachette Audio. When not behind a mic, Matt enjoys acting and is heavily involved in local community theatre. He made his directorial debut in August 2024 at Bremerton Community Theatre with Earnest Thompson’s one act comedy, The Constituent. See more of his work on his Website and Instagram.
Arna Miller is a narrative illustrator inspired by vintage packaging, matchboxes, magic show posters, and early-20th century art. After leaving a career in architecture during the 2008 crash, she pursued art in her mid-twenties, driven by a desire for creative freedom. Her work, often accompanied by text, captures magical moments through a lens of “Possible, but Not Likely” — like a vole floating on a cigarette box, but never a dinosaur with a laptop. She draws in pencil using references from books and the internet, and now works from a cozy studio in her own home. See more of her work on her Website and Instagram.
This is Matt’s debut with Birdy. Keep your eyes peeled for more future work by this talented artist. Head to our Explore section to see more work by Arna and Birdy’s other talented contributed artists and writers.