The Silent Zoo

    Why stop at a stuffed donkey?
    A small room is only limited by the lines,
    and sawdust. Once the garage is scuttled
    for a den, possibility crosses
    the room like the taxidermist's wife.
    She's not exact, but clever.
    So the lion overarching the desk
    is not so much leaping
    as climbing the ladder.
    Genius like that is the poor vehicle
    of the heart, presupposing another
    honest reaction. Let's face it,
    we all love her. She would bleat
    better than a goat
    standing in an ocean.


    The Taxidermist's Cat

    A molar I dedicated to modern acts of camoflauge,
    and banned from my collection, has ceased.
    Unsalvageable. With
    hairline fractures disappearing into the

    fundament. It's neighbor, a baby tooth
    that has no substitute, clings on, but over
    time, has become less a tooth and more a curate's
    egg, over which I stand guard. Which reminds me of a cat I knew

    who lived behind the great glass architecture of a doorway
    relish. I met her through proximity and habit,
    hers and ours, which meant we had similar timetables.
    I called the cat Potato because she was notable for

    her coat: a sentimental recipe for a gravy of
    castaway bacon with spots of anchor and buried gripe
    we melted for cheap cuts of cod, poured as trim for
    pealed and boiled reds, the perfect colors of

    disguise for a cat in a season of old snow
    like today, thirty years later, and she still sits with
    head tipped to catch the roofline, ready to greet
    the sinus of a new winter's day. It meets us now as

    the approximate reduction of a devotion,
    ignoring even the smell of dinner cans. Even I
    know this collapsed stare, authentic to gentleman
    specialists, their suede jackets mildewed with rotting field

    notes, reminders that anything properly observed can be
    mistaken. Because displayed here is an example of
    a man who is afraid of rats,
    and only accurate to seventy percent.




    Bio Note
      Christopher Burawa's book manuscript, The Small Mystery of Lapses, won the 2005 Cleveland State University Press First Book Competition and appeared in April 2006. His chapbook of translations of Icelandic poet Johann Hjalmarsson’s poetry, Of the Same Mind, won the 2005 Toad Press International Chapbook Competition and was published last summer. He has poems published or forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, The American Poetry Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and The Connecticut Review.


       
     



      Christopher

      Burawa