Lion Lights
1September 15, 2015 by The Citron Review
by Jacqueline Balderrama
—after Richard Turere’s invention to protect livestock near the Kenyan savanna
We may never know what it is like for a predator to enter our gate and drag away the cow
We may never know what it is like to be the predator
found in the grass then dragged into town by our hind paws
hearing this is my territory /That is yours
Here the compromise in a modified car battery linked to lights running off solar
Here after so many shunned scarecrows hung
dewy and limp / At night torch bulbs flash for the lions
glinting off their eyes, glinting off the dull cows’ eyes
So the lions move toward zebra foals / The boy
enters in the morning with feed and draws the milk / We want to say
to ourselves: the lion is a burglar is a drunk driving his car into our tree is a mortician
who steals your dead cornea / But no
The lion is a lion is a lion is a word / We don’t know
what a lion is outside the cage the channel or the big cat rescue farm
How otherwise is it are we outside the lion / Sometimes we’re just
straw stuffed in our old clothes sometimes we move
Jacqueline Balderrama is pursuing an MFA in poetry at Arizona State University where she teaches and serves as Poetry Editor for Hayden’s Ferry Review. She is the first place recipient of the 2012–2013 Ina Coolbrith Memorial Poetry Prize and has received several Piper House Fellowships for international writing residencies. Her most recent work is forthcoming in Blackbird among others.
[…] I think it’s important that we find compromises like Richard Turere’s invention in order to protect people, livestock, and natural predators. The poem is available here: “Lion Lights” […]