If a springbok were to compete on Season 24 of ABC’s The Bachelor

the captive us at home, belegging-ed, would marvel
at her ability to eat her fellow contestants’

succulents right out of their rose-gold pots,
this being her primary water supply. We would

seethe as the women seethe at her slenderness,
and thus her inherent ability to pull off festival wear.

She’s here for the Right Reasons: to find love, only
incidentally to evade a pride of blood-muzzled lions.

When on a group date featuring the Harlem Globetrotters,
she’d elegantly pronk her way along the court. When

the final few travel to an exotic locale, she’d be like, “What?”
She’d impress The Bachelor with her quizzical little face,

her relatively short gestation. America would be cheering
her on. America loves a blond vegetarian. Chris Harrison

loves a blond vegetarian. And when she was proffered
the final, final rose, only to delicately nibble it up,

we would all say how brave, how brave to turn away love
for the chance to roam the shrublands of Karoo.


Grace Arenas is a poet who received her MFA in poetry from the University of Montana in 2017. Her chapbook, they’ll outlive you all, was published in late 2017 with Dancing Girl Press. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in Black Warrior Review, Malarkey Books, Theta Wave, and others. She currently lives and teaches in Boston.
Read about the inspiration for this poem at the intersection of entertainment and sonic discovery.