The big top

Llama carcass licked clean road kill
marrow sucked dry, bones angled
like discarded whitewashed stilts
eyeless socket pits stare cage bars

inside the restless diner wakes

steel struts stripe the rug thin lion
rib cage rising through African skin,
king of the jungle, pride of
savannah, mountain prisoner

pacing off his push me pull you
meal, Serengeti sun imagined
on every icy horizon
through his deadly dull distant gaze

our tamer lion, jailed in a trailer
on a buff dust road snaking Andean peaks
en route to a sawdust circus ring somewhere
hears whipcrack gunshot echoes on canvas tent walls,
red stripes restrain, chair lifted,
the big game begins