lion

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.