Arsenic Lobster
poetry journal |
Issue Twenty-five Spring 2011 |
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 |