We fed bread slices to snakes.
They swallowed them whole.
Satisfied, we left them lying
with fat lumps in their throats.
At the seal display
Phyllis played Debussy on her clarinet.
They barked, howled
and drowned themselves to “La mer.”
The otters demanded an encore.
Manny taught the gorillas
how to shit in front of the crowds.
The great apes weren’t so great
except when they drank the sherry
we left by their cage.
After we told the giraffes
their numbers were endangered
they circled in their pen
and tied knots in their necks.
We rode the elephants into
the gift shop
traded their ivory
for toy elephants
fed cigarettes to the camels
painted the zebras black
unleashed hyenas in the food booth
taught the baboons how to shoot chimps
launched penguins at parrots
and gored the rhino with his own callused horn.
Skinned the lions with the claws
of a sloth, waving their pelts
like bloody flags
and with the teeth of the last lonely polar bear
crowned ourselves: kings
of the concrete, cages
and rubble.