_edited_edited.png)
BIRTHDAY ZOO
I went to visit
my father but
he was asleep
the elephants will
never come over
my way excepting
the one under
the trellis I spy
behind an oriental spicebush
ten thousand lbs
the bigger
lion awake blinks
flies & sun & then
back down the chilean
flamingos take shade together
under tumbles of hydrangea
the bar headed goose
eats the lambs ear
alone the chance to be
a neurotic completist
crested pigeons on the
ground the walkway matches
their feathers
they will die
two yellow
budgerigars neck
on a branch
there is a totem
near the western
grey kangaroo
there is no dingo
the lack of a dingo
disturbs me
the eastern black
rhinoceros
faces her ass
to the crowd her right
ear is chipped only
ostriches over
the fence in Africa
masai giraffe awaits
hair at the base of a balcony
for every trumpeter
swan a dozen ducks
in the water
until at once
they shore
the amur
tiger open maw
where they harbor
the harbor seal
grizzly bear behind
the waterfall
had a dream, claws
like cucumbers
the grizzly bear
beneath the waterfall
the red crowned crane
stabs to eat beneath
the clover how clever
beak as a cleaver barely
any red until he knows
better & the feed
box it is baby
sun bear bakes
in a basket amur
leopard akimbo paws
along the wall in cases
of rest the red
pandas prefer
two to a box
take in the takin
from behind the slated
wooden fence the andean
condor picks the bone
clean koalas in the crook
my movement
amongst the sugar
maples while climbing
the deck
northern tree
shrew along
the edge of his trash
pan golden-bellied
mangabey all fours across
the branch may tap on glass
as sign warns
though I may not
fossa fast
asleep
I am in the bush-
baby’s red night
where better to be
than in the cold shrew darkness
aye aye as a shadow
beneath his structures
but what I came
for luminescence
the aquatics where finding
& counting the stone fish
is a problem
please let me be
a bubble spanish hog
downward crook
spider monkey
handsome & limbed
Jon Conley (he/him) is a poet and musician from Cleveland. Find him online at conjonley.tumblr.com and @beachstav.