Today’s poem combines the bop  (a poetic form invented at Cave Canem), the story from the last novel I read, and a Motown song I’ve always loved.

Prompt (Two for Tuesday): Write a hunter/hunted poem.

The Hunter Gets Captured by the Game (The Tiger’s Wife: A Bop)

Bombs rain down on the zoo, exploding
the tiger’s world from captivity
to freedom—beyond the melted
bars, past paved and tree-lined streets–
guided by the pit of its stomach and a faint
familiar smell from a distant village.

What’s this ol’ world coming to?
Things just ain’t the same.

Only the hunter can save the village,
draped in the ursine skin of the game
he has won, wielding knives and setting
snares, preying on the ways and habits
of the yellow devil in the forest.
But the tiger slips from the grasp
of this master of the business of death—
as if protected by some invisible force.

What’s this ol’ world coming to?
Things just ain’t the same.

But she lays winter fowl on steel-teeth snaps
to bait the hunter’s anger into knee-deep
snow, where her tiger-husband waits to feast
on a human heart, pick flesh and organs
clean from the rib cage, and leave the hunter’s
empty skin strewn across blood-smeared fields.

What’s this ol’ world coming to?
Things just ain’t the same.

~Pamela L. Taylor © 2013