wildscape. literary journal

Another
by Baabi Kir

I could have been a goose
in a Chinese meat market, hanging
upside down with no feet or insides, unmoving
but for the air that sways me a little,

but I am a man here, bearing
this now with straw breaths and a belly full of sand,
holding my head with two stone hands
tracing with a third
the round ache
of a crown that I once wore and that
wore me.


I could have been a German Shepherd
in America, watching
the news on tv with no interest
and the road and the traffic, waiting
for her to come back, so I can warn her
of this new man, so she can ignore me, so
the days go fast and then stand still, crooked,
so that I'm in a new home and she
is on the news, and I watch her
and the road and the traffic, and wait
for her
to come back,

but I am another creature
in another land mass, not many Bundys
or Gacys around, but
the hacksaws still whirr from the pulpits,
the boys still hang from the beads
of rosaries, and the girls
still vanish from their own eyes.
in my chest is a brotherly love that
is kneaded with the flash of whips,
my body a bridge of scars, from somewhere
to me to somewhere,
my dreams the defeats of those who came before me,
from somewhere to the me that defies, the me
that is molded into what yesterday desired, to the me
that surrenders while nursing the wish
that he

was another 

about the author // Baabi Kir