Royal Rhodes

Animal Dreams

A skilled hunter trapped    and flayed you alive,
leaving the muscles          and sinews around a
bone scaffolding     and without a drop of blood 
and without a spent sound     as I shuffled into
a chamber nearby          marked by dark smudged
clusters of floating mammoths    striding horses
and bison that cover the arched walls. They are
stripped of their covering hide.   Neither sacred
or artful, but raw.      And in their amazed midst
I show them my self-mutilation     and shocking
these pure animals by all we do   to each other.
They can not conceive      how we learn to hurt
ourselves.    They creep into our cold beds and
and under our skins    if they want to be scared.
And they pass along   the chilling stories to feel
fortunate that at least they will never be  human.
 
 
***
 

Royal Rhodes is a retired educator and has lived
in rural Ohio for more than forty years. His poems
have been in a variety of print and online literary
journals, including Snakeskin Poetry, Chained Muse,
Ekphrastic Review Challenge, and The Montreal Review,
among others.

A Song for Royal