Briefly, while I watch Lion King with my son
for the billionth time until I finally snap
it off. Enough.
I’m ill, soul-sick
and tired of the beasts
my second grader adores.
In the movie. At the zoo.
In National Geographic’s
LIVE safari videos.
I’m tired of how they toss
their sulky manes, flash dagger-
tipped teeth, suck up all the fresh air.
It’s hard to watch them devour
raw baby-billy-goat meat
as if it’s a three-star Michelin meal.
I’m done with the Scars, the pride,
the gluttonous cubs sipping stolen
blood with their silver-spooned tongues.
And those bristle-backed hyenas who spar
and squall dangling one slippery rung
above the parasite class—
the hook worms, lung worms,
trypanosomes. Now those are creatures
the boy and I could both dig into.
Invisible army of leo’s invincible foes
concealed in a tsetse fly’s
Trojan-Horse bloodlust.
I’ll buy us a second-hand microscope.
Maybe he’ll be a scientist, I muse.
But, no, he’d rather be a YouTube star,
a crypto king or whatever
gig might make him a billionaire.
No, wait—a trillionaire, he says, because
inflation (big new word), because LEGO’s,
Nintendo Switch, and monster trucks, because
sorry, kid—lost job, sick dog, roof, eggs, bills.
Mary Beth Hines is the author of Winter at a Summer House (Kelsay, 2021). Her poems appear widely in literary journals, with new work forthcoming in RockPaperPoem and Whale Road Review. She also reviews book for Lightwood Magazine and other journals, with her most recent piece up at Cider Press Review. A member of the Boiler House Poets Collective, she participates in an annual Assets for Artists workshop residency at the Studios at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA).
