Nuits Balneaires, Still Life With Animals (Artist Instagram)
a savage heat / cloaks the forest
& the sick dusk / brings no relief
no longer / a derelict zoo
but a still life
where gunshots pulverize
the sky / & wreathe
this concrete prison
where feces & blackwater
clog dens
melancholy pervades
like tear gas /
aged trees sag / & each cage is
an unfinished stanza
//
audible waves / of famine
in their bellies / serpents stir
in verdant heaps / & monkeys scratch
their bald heads / as they flay
blackening banana peels
still life /
but for how long?
//
the Iroko trees are cadavers
& at dusk / they are rubied
like hacked tusks
the antiqued eyes / of rifles
flame / between branches
these cages / hold
thin light /
& little else