The Last Neanderthal's Love Song

by Caleb Crain
Steamboats are ruining everything.

O ancestors! Please hear my cry.
I'm eighteen summers old.
I need a wife, but evolution's
Left me in the cold.
I'm the last Neanderthal.
I have some woman friends—
Nice-looking, others tell me—but
They're Homo sapiens.
I'd like to meet a girl like Mom
With a rich potato form.
These sapiens are willowy;
They don't look very warm.
A woman looks her best, I think,
With low, protruding brow,
But the female forehead fashion
Is high and flat right now.
A lady's lower jaw should sink
Delicately in.
Beneath their lips, these girls have got
A pointy, prickly "chin."
A sideways egg's the pretty shape
That suits a female skull.
But modern girls have heads as round
As the moon does when it's full.
Alas, O ancestors! Alas,
Our race will not survive.
I'll never wed, and I'm the last
Neanderthal alive.