was crowded, families shuffling
into cool, barred halls,
their little ones pointing at the lumbering,
muscle-swollen gorillas whose leathery children
tumbled in the distance, their mama alert,
big Papa swinging his
bulk to the front, his back up
against a trunk, glancing at a weaker
father through the glass,
slowly scratching his chest
with one rough hand, rubbing with the other
his penis as
the kids giggle, then drops it, shifts
his weight to pick the broken
edge of a toenail,
then back again—that demonstration.
Finally, Mother coughs
and the weaker Father
finds his voice:
“Let’s go.”
A couple weeks ago I attended a workshop organized by Frank Beltrano, the Lois Marie Harrod Poetry Writing Workshop, and one of the things we did to get the juices flowing was to write a poem on the spot, based on a prompt, a number of which were provided. One prompt situation mentioned monkeys and a zoo, and the memory in the poem above, from maybe forty years ago, came to mind. I've never liked writing poems from prompts, from lack of confidence, but this one worked out well. And, while writing it, I came to a new understanding of the event that had never occurred to me before: that the male gorilla came forward and sat between the female gorilla and the man behind the glass on purpose, to show him just who was the man around there. So having to write something you wouldn't on your own can have its rewards.
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إبراهيم أشعياء عوض I think it has a good flow of images.
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