There is a landscape in a tiger’s
face, and it can be beautiful:
The silt banks of those black lips
framing a river of tongue and
jagged pepples, the river framed
by fields of orange savannah
rolling and flexing as the hunter
glides back and forth in its tight cage,
poisoning with its eyes,
drops of mercury;
straining its tangled neck muscles
like gym ropes that can hold
a grown elk above water.

Waiting, waiting for a break in those
thin willow bars.

She’s out in a blur of reeds,
those taunting voices drowning
in the deep river,
those cackling shaved apes
dying beautifully on the rolling savannah.