Once I had an enemy. I felt
———-a little bad about it, even then.
I thought he was a shimmering lion who flayed
———-and harrowed, with no discrimination, men
and women, lives and the earth that they were lived on.
———-But he was just a normal lion, undeserving
of what I knew was an evil reward, my scorn.
———-Who scorns a lion? He rises up, nervous,
and fills the air with the sound of air itself.
———-The very instrument of death, but not
the very thing. He made a sharpened sound
———-and loved it. He made a pit and digged it. What
ever possessed him to get down in the pit
———-he’d made, I’ll never know, but he lay down
his righteousness, his golden skull, and claimed it.
———-I watched him make the pit he’d made his own.
Nathaniel Perry is the author of two books of poetry, Nine Acres (Copper Canyon/APR) and Long Rules (Backwaters), and a book of essays, Joy (Or Something Darker but Like It) (Michigan). He is editor of Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review and lives in Virginia.
Photo by Bhargava Srivari on Unsplash
