Brent Fisk

The Liger at the Hogle Zoo, 1952

My stripes are deep inside my body
as if I sucked the marrow from their bones
long before my birth.
Taller than my father at the withers,
still, from promontories I see no other

to call my own.

How will I hunt my meat, my mate?
I pace the bars and pray for prey,
but the keepers slide metal trays of flank and loin,

and while the blood is blood, the game is gone.
When I sense the females have gone to heat,

the wind dies down and just the hiss of grass remains.

I understand the mule,

my sterile and stubborn brother,
looks for things to kick: milk pails and strutting hens,
the taller horse and the rarer hinny.

I sense the mother tiger, the lion father.
I hear the neck nip and the mating growl
but want nothing of it. Pressed hard
between the sky and ground, those two great bodies

moving together, producing nothing

but this yawning maw.

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