Sean Cole
Two Poems
Poem for Pussies.
You stupid leopard. You,
lazing there reading Whitman
between naps like a pied spud. What spot
is this the rogue one on your hip that
doesn’t tap the rhythm of your coat?
Brain of a star fruit. Yet
lithe enough to duck poachers.
How’s it done, falseface?
How’ve you lulled the jungle into
shameless flirts? What’s the future
of a slouch like you? Roaming
in and out of myth, wedding no one?
Newsprint-smeared nose growing
spiteless? Mostly,
it’s pity hangs my shirt up
in your wardrobe.
Speckless life is yours yet you
pick brindle.Tiger.
for Shafer Hall
Tiger says “I’ll tear your new orifice” with his eyes. Ire.
Iger plus “N” is the river I send my hate across to evade
his name shame. Middle is “grr,” a gerund with fur.
I’m a jungle neophyte. The height I leap transforms air to stair.
To err is human, but it’s tiger too. If only I could undo
his receptor, unglue the high gloss in his roaring ogle.
Once I was mammalian. Now I race through past eras, aping.
