Reading Group Guide

MENAGERIE

Pillow, chrysalis, claw:

you wake, locked inside

a Walkerville two-story.

Time has made you wild,

a captive inside your taxonomic

home. The scenery outside

is flutteringly alive, stirring

behind tableau curtains.

The skies are severe clear

and there are bars clouding

your head, a manifestation

of today's migraine or else

a protection annexed onto

a messy world. Sugar glass

comfort for a gilded cage,

catch yourself spitting into

the fishbowl, putting key to

locket. Screens go masking

to distract the eye, meshed

up tight to keep the time flies

buzzing. Maybe it would be

better to be a weed in a wild

field but you are more like

a blue rose flocked by delicate

avian darlings, nibbling on

the crusts of fickle patronage.

A chain link fence defines the yard,

plucked raw and tilled turf green.

This is a boundary that the furred

or feathered don't see, one your

neighbours will help watch in

the middle of the hooded night.

Culture is a strange beast,

a petri dish of cells on display.

A zoo is a garden where animals

grow, to make space for the city.