Interesting

Everything else is just giving us
Something to talk about. The writer
Isn’t wrong. There’s a mystery there.

All that matters most in a story
Will involve people interacting
In well-known human animal ways—

Partnering, mating, socializing,
Kin and non-kin cooperation,
All that can go wrong or well with those.

Everything else is just giving us
Something to talk about. In that case,
Why do stories need everything else?

Aren’t people enough to talk about?
Carve everything in any fiction
That isn’t explicitly human

(Mating, friendship, betrayal, so forth)
Away from all of the characters.
What’s left isn’t quite textbook lecture,

Although it may be dense with lessons,
Morals, politics, information.
It won’t work like freestanding essays,

But it will suggest a distraction
From humans is needed to create
Stories humanly interesting.