Paper Tiger
Somewhere in the house is a tiger,
won by a boy with a wide-open heart,
one ear gnawed by the dog of his enemy
while he, three thousand miles
away, gazed at the moon and howled.
Somewhere in the house is a tiger,
whiskers battered and broken, a stubby
striped avatar won at a fair,
and three days later emerging mildly
crumpled from a padded mailer in the home
of the girl who lived with his enemy,
sent by the boy to stand in his stead,
be his second, his sigil, burning bright
in the forest of his enemy.
Now somewhere in the house is the tiger
the boy blames for heartbreak,
and he still can’t see how the tiger could
let it happen, sit quietly in a suitcase bundled
with the debris of commuter hotels,
how a tiger, not the meekest
of creatures, could sit back when his enemy
knocked on the door, kissed the girl,
and sought to buy back her favor.
She had never been for sale before.
Somewhere in the house is that tiger,
one ear slightly chewed, because the boy won,
rode the vicious staring bull called Don’t Lose the Girl
for the infinite eight seconds of tears, and now, three
thousand miles away from the streets in which the salt of
why won’t you talk to me?
I cannot talk. I cannot explain.
was sown,
somewhere in his house is a tiger.
(originally appeared in Welter, May 2010)
