Tiger

Tiger

My toothbrush is the color of tigers
He claims. We are brushing his teeth.
I stand mute behind him,
Hiding in the underbrush of his shadow,
And watch the slow sinuous possession
Of boy by beast;

How amid the fiery eruption of a sly, muscular grin,
Teeth are bared in a milk-white snarl.
Sometimes a paw rises to dismiss the waves of froth
Crowding the majesty of that cruel smile.
Occasionally, a wild growl rumbles through cavernous jaws
And flecks of soft white fury stain the jungle mirror.

Poem

I saw my name in print the other day.
Two sharp strokes of identity colored
A page otherwise numb in its devotion
To details of idle mayhem. My name,
And the sound of my mother saying it,
Were drowned out as beneath us, a bomb exploded
Killing twenty-nine, three of them children.
My mother held me closer.

Together we watched the price of vegetables rise,
As nearby, in a neighbouring country, a man leapt
To his death with a rose clenched in his teeth.
What was he thinking, my mother asked me.
As if I knew, I pointed her to a small paragraph
Nestled against his doom: leaving the gas on,
Last night a young woman had died in her sleep.
Buried beneath her was the poem I had written.