lion
By Quan Barry
Shagged-gold, at rest the great haunches
as if axled, fur sleeked like a butter rug.
In the Serengeti sun, the male’s harem
like a solar system, each lady kept
exclusive, her seasonal heat for him alone,
estrous belly pressed to the ground,
then the male’s riding her musculature—
throughout evolution the cat’s barbed penis
nicking his breached mate as he dismounts.
See the deliberate walk, cool as a criminal,
the multi-jointed forepaws placed consciously
even by the usurped king, his eye teeth blacked,
his tail rotted off, tired wag of a bloody stump
as he finally falls dying, the crucified face bedded
in its wheel of hair, the tawny miscegenated eyes
binocular in breadth. Shark in the long grasses.
Shark in the long grass. Smell everywhere, the gazelle
with its small-headed splendor gracing the plains
is ambushed, devoured, its horned bone rack
souvenired, the murderer’s ripping muzzle crimsoned.
In the despot’s sons’ palace of pure gold
the three in the iron cage lazing like statues.
When the American unlocks the hinged door
our shackled hearts contract. Unhooded and naked
we are pushed into their presence,
and for a shining moment the animals study us,
these fabulous aliens.
Here in a desert captivity
snatched from the baobab’s sour fruit,
their swagged bellies shifted, broken, and resignedly
the ancient drive rose up only in one—
its head wreathed beyond sorrow
as it slouched out of the habitual darkness,
the permanent rictus of its terrible mouth
pain-struck. The thing came toward me
with its ruined light, and I saw affliction in it.
Dream of mastery. Dream of being wholly consumed,
freed. I am the lion and the lion is me.
Then the American pulls us out.
Quan Barry, "lion" from Water Puppets. Copyright © 2011 by Quan Barry. All rights are controlled by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA 15260. Used by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press.
Source:
Water Puppets
(University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011)