zookeeper

ZOOKEEPER

Apples in the fridge drawer growing rotten.

Bananas turning brown on the counter.

Cake is what my silly body wants.

Doldrums of a gray rainy Wednesday.

Ear, where's your magic, your philosophy?

Fingers, your tricks? Leaves are in love with,

gummed to the driveway, wishing to melt. When

heat of your leg brushed heat of my leg,

I don't want to know what it's saying.

Jammed up, listening to my body.

Kisses on lips that seem real in my dreams.

Let it go, let it go. My dumb body

makes the weirdest mistakes. See a good man?

Numbness seeps into nether regions.

Open my heart to a splash of light, please.

Please there on the wall. Now the light's in a

quiet man. Let it soft focus his face,

rest on the plane of his nose, cheeks in

shadow. God help me, nothing. Nothing can

turn me on like a snarl, like a flexed arm

under threat. Like hidden motives

vexing me, keeping me up past midnight,

well after three, I'd sleep but the dreams come,

xerox after xerox of his stern face.

Yell at me, mind. I'm done with fists, being

zookeeper to a wolf, a bear, a tiger.

Mary Ann Honaker is the author of Becoming Persephone (Third Lung Press, 2019), Whichever Way the Moon (Main Street Rag, 2023), and the forthcoming Night is Another Realm Altogether (Sheila-Na-Gig, 2026). Her poems have appeared in Bear Review, DIAGRAM, JMWW, Juked, Little Patuxent Review, Rattle.com, River Heron Review, Solstice, Sweet Tree Review, Tuskegee Review, and elsewhere. She currently lives in Beckley, West Virginia.