August 13, 2015Central Park Zoo, 1970
Back in the old zoo—the place the child
of New York’s Parks commissioner once called
Sing-Sing for beasts, where elephants and wild
cats, bears and rhinos were all jailed,
sliced into strips of pacing fur, the shriek
and stink of monkeys everywhere, a mess—
it was not pastoral or picturesque,
and unprotected by a wilderness,
forced to face a hungry, hot stare,
we felt them close and thought, we are like this,
monkeys fighting, lions with twitching haunches,
their paunches swinging; and while we ate our lunches,
children circled round the chipped green benches,
taunting each other, “you belong in there.”
from #48 - Summer 2015