THE DAINTY MONSTERS
Michael
Ondaatje
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You Can Look But You Better Not Touch
Moving
.....wave and cloud
.....WHITE HANDED GIBBONS are
.....moving like billiard balls
........................... .................to
rhythms of Ethiopia,
teeth barred like movie cops,
hands warmer than ours
Thrusting in their swing
like dreams they move down
never touching ground
which would be collision, the
awakening
Here in a cage—30 feet high
they contract your eyes to them alone,
scattered punctuation,
till confinement is spaceless
FEEDING TIME
a relief to see
popular times
are still the most artistic
and blurred lions sink
claws in splayed
torn hands of food
ROUSSEAU wisely eliminated
leopards from his follies
A mistake to imagine them static
Parts
of elaborate metronomes
FLAMINGOES are
being washed
with hoses today
See it
a fan of
fingered spray
stretching like nets
to trap
an illicit cult
of women
A vast Miami postcard
in the midst of grey Riverdale
.....A novelist (FRENCH) said:
.....to feel at ease in a zoo
.....desire the females
KIM
in green suede
hunches, and
glides up the hill to zebras
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