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Lions Are Interesting

By Joel Brouwer b. 1968 Joel Brouwer

Each morning in the little white cabin

by the river they woke to a raccoon

clawing under the floorboards or banging

in the wood stove. They did not discuss this.

Instead they said it was a perfect day

to pick blueberries on the hill, or that

a hike to the old glassworks sounded good.

They were beginning to speak not in meat

but in the brown paper the butcher wraps

around it. Brown paper around dirty

magazines. Like dirty magazines, they

only traced the contour of substance: silk

over skin, skin over muscle, muscle over

bone. What's under bone? Marrow? Their forks so

small and dull. As if for dolls. You can tell

dolls from animals because the latter

are made of meat. Many eat it, also.

Lions are interesting. Lions don't eat

the flesh of their kills right away, but first

lap up the blood, until the meat is blanched

nearly white. White as the little cabin

by the river they stayed in that summer.

White as the raccoon covered in ashes,

his black eyes bottomless and bright with hate.

Source: Poetry (February 2004).

Biography

Born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, poet Joel Brouwer is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and Syracuse University. Brouwer is the author of several collections of poetry, including And So (2009); Centuries (2003), a National Book Critics Circle Notable Book; and Exactly What Happened (1999), winner of the Larry Levis Reading Prize from Virginia Commonwealth University. He has also published several chapbooks. Brouwer has been . . .

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