How to Be Eaten by a Lion. Michael Johnson

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СКАЧАТЬ pulse up through the plates, calling

      its wrath through the faults: I keep company

      with gods, why do you not listen? This earth

      is such a terrible loneliness. Built of dust,

      they say. I’m just a man, bound to fall.

      Why care without another to share the hours?

      O firestone, I’ve unearthed nothing. O enemy hour,

      when comes calling my friend in the fall,

      my company into the country of dust?

      The Volcanologist’s Lament II

      From the distress of the undressed—

      unbedded rocks, tripped-over tree limbs—

      scurrisome bugs and so-many-legged pedes

      unhomed: life is in the running fight,

      that telltale scatter of things driven to endure.

      We all know the reaper’s come-hither claw wag.

      Without cipher, the flourish and thrall offers so little,

      yet faced with lavasilk on the slopes, we stare.

      What has the flame to offer?

      Survival is luck and love of oneself,

      timing, smarts, a pinch of learned-the-hard-way.

      Lava can warm you with the heat of all it has burned.

      What it gives, it has taken.

      Rainmaker

      They called you in their need,

      none believing in your ricketed

      legs and bird bones, the desiccated

      eagle head you carried.

      You shook your lion-tail sceptre

      at their quiet ridicule,

      strutted your beads and spat the dark fuel

      of your prayers into the fire.

      After the thunder and cloudgrace,

      were they tears on weathered faces

      laughing their thanks? Did they

      ever believe in you rainmaker—

      or was it enough they cried, Asante!

      Asante! and drank the water?

      How to Be Eaten by a Lion

      for Claire Davis

      If you hear the rush, the swish of mottled sand

      and dust kicked up under the striving paws,

      its cessation, falling into the sharp and brittle grass

      like the tick of a tin roof under sun

      or hint of rain that nightly wakes you,

      try to stand your ground. Try not to scream,

      for it devalues you. That tawny head and burled

      mange, the flattened ears of its sleek engine

      will seem only a blur, a shock, a shadow

      across your neck that leaves you cold.

      It may seem soft, barely a blow,

      more like an exquisite giving

      of yourself to the ground, made numb

      by those eyes. It may be easier just to watch,

      for fighting will only prolong things,

      and you will have no time to notice the sky,

      the texture of dust, what incredible leaves

      the trees have. Instead, focus on your life,

      its crimson liquor he grows drunk on.

      Notice the way the red highlights his face,

      how the snub nose is softened, the lips made fuller.

      Notice his deft musculature, his rapture,

      because in all of creation there is not art

      to compare with such elegance, such simplicity.

      Notice this and remember it,

      this way in which you became beautiful

      when you thought there was nothing more.

      Bone Lullabies

      Everything that comes here to feed dies.

      Mazuku, the tribes say. Evil wind.

      Volcanic air gone glacial through dried creekbeds,

      stoking the flora to life, drawing the grazers.

      Gazelle and kudu racks bedeck the turreted anthills

      like underlings for the elephant pharaohs.

      Why here? Perhaps this was the way to die:

      drawn by green in an otherwise wilderness,

      following the guideposts of your family’s bones.

      You’d follow swifts snapping the dusk down,

      bequeathing evening to night.

      The stars might seem a paradise descending,

      birdcage blueprints for the rungs of your torso,

      each rib sunned and razed, your breaths housed there

      so that as you rest your marrow rocks the beasts to bed.

      The soil springs the veined calligraphy of leaves.

      The birds dine on the ripe fruits of your eyes,

      perched on your carriage staves, flapping

      their prayers in the dust to eventide songs

      that roam your bones long after sleep has come.

      Rockhound

      Across the СКАЧАТЬ