June 8, 2020Social Experiment in Which I Am the [Bear]
At the dinner party
I didn’t want to attend
because these people
are from work, meaning
[overtime] without pay,
and one woman, newish
person in old money, ring
on her hand that could
lift a family out of the mud, says [boy]
I didn’t know you were
this funny, I didn’t know
you were a troubadour, a silk rousting
my ears and of course I am
paraphrasing because she can’t
really talk like me, a [writer] and all
except when she flexes and says
and I heard you write
poetry too, my [worship] you aren’t
intimidating
at all are you,
you’re as ursine as they come
and if you think
she didn’t really say ursine,
then you’ve never
seen a hunter try to aim
straight with one hand
while they offered
the forest’s gifts with the other,
and if you think I didn’t know
she thought I was once
a great beast neutered down
to [civility] then
you haven’t attended enough
dinner parties, and I wish
I had relevant facts about [bears],
how we are of the
few mammals that can see
in color, how we can be
vegetarians or carnivorous,
how even a shaved polar
bear is still black, but this time
I just laugh low
and hollow like a stolen growl,
I am already
on my hind legs after all, already
talking with my paws wide
as a preservation, my voice
shakes the leaves even
when I don’t plan on it, our lineage
traces back generations, but once
you’ve assimilated, who’s to tell
when you were [captured]?
Who’s to argue where the bear ends
and the circus begins?
There’s a world between
learning the song of one’s claws
against a new throat
and performing tricks
for anyone who bought
a ticket, but I did wash the mud
from my fingernails before
I arrived—I’m still
laughing, by the way, still
hoarding my teeth deeper
within me, I am a [library]
full of the times I yanked
something apart and the times
I went hungry
and the times I let my hair grow
and grow and grow
until I was a snarl of a thing
and I ate everything
the party could offer me,
like I could never
become full.
from #67 - Spring 2020