Arsenic Lobster poetry journal
Issue Twenty-five
Spring 2011
| Home | Current Issue | Contributors | Review | Order | Archive | Submission | About Us | Contact Us | Previous | Next |
 
The Wild Capybara Within You
Henry Shifrin

The Wild Capybara Within You
Nostrils flare into stone. Waterline
hems the disguise. You've bent your guinea
pig self – all two hundred pounds – too large
for wheels, a face to the glass, a hand
of pellets. Here canopy trees fence
the sky, but there is no final glass
between flesh and beak, flesh and fang, flesh
and the daggers a mouth possesses –
only to be water while you dream
about grass, the most acrid crisp blade.
The chewing is a thought in itself.
Recall how the thinking stews inside
you and drops from you as rich grainy
seeds of digestion. Another meal,
in the morning it smokes a long tail,
a garlicky steam. The toucans squawk
a favorite song, in a moment
of glades, when a snout-to-snout kiss might
happen in a breath. And o wouldn't
your fur stand on end? The first time you
weren't water – but a rain of lips. Stay
still. Don't let the tremor take you.
Every dark has cayman eyes, eagle
talons. Be stone. A snake's grip lies
in loss of breath. Feel the breeze. Steal air
along the waterline. Hiding is
your predominant trait: you slowly
mask yourself as a piece of river.

About Henry Shifrin

| Home | Current Issue | Contributors | Review | Order | Archive | Submission | About Us | Contact Us | Previous | Next |