– THE LION AT THE ZOO –

If you’re bored and don’t know what to do
let me give you a suggestion or two.
First, draw a picture of a lion, the kind from the zoo,
dining at a fancy restaurant with someone like you.
When the lion orders zebra and antelope stew
garnished with a side of tall grass, I suggest that you do too.
Then, while you wait, you can ask if it’s true
what they say about life at the zoo:
“Is it boring? Does it feel like a trap? Does it make you feel blue
to be in a place so far from home and with only a few
other lion friends hanging around, and nothing to do
like chasing prey and taking a snooze
in the warm African sun on a long afternoon?”
Then, listen carefully to the lion’s point of view
when he says, “It’s not the savannah, that’s true,
but living here I’ve seen and learned some things I never knew.
Things like the panda bear eats mostly bamboo,
that joey is the word for a baby kangaroo,
and that the noise coming from the bird house is probably a cuckatoo
chatting about who knows what and to who knows who.
I’ve also learned that people like to get tattoos
of things like tigers, and skulls, and lucky horseshoes;
that a birthday party requires a number of kazoos;
that people like to ride the zoo’s train even though it just goes in one big loop.
These things I would never see in Tanzania or Cameroon.”
And then the lion might say, “But what about you? What do you
do when you’re feeling drab and that you’ve hollered your last woohoo?”
And while the lion sips on his water, and while he primps his big hairdo,
tell him about all the things you like to do:
to ride your bike through the park and practice kung-fu,
to play school with your friends and count to thirty-two,
to pretend that your name is Mace Windu
and without your purple light saber you wouldn’t know what to do.
To that the lion might nod his head yes and say, “Very true, very true.”
After dinner and dessert (chocolate-covered gnu
for two), you can say, before bidding adieu,
“it was so cool to meet you” to which he’ll probably say, “thank you”
and “you’re pretty rad too” and “it’s been a while since I felt this brand new.”

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TODD McKINNEY lives with his wife and two sons on a small farm outside Muncie, Indiana, where he teaches writing at Ball State University. His work has appeared in Puerto del Sol, Monkeybicycle, The Greensboro Review, Split Lip Magazine and elsewhere.
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