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  • Among the Animals
  • Chelsea Rathburn (bio)

Is there any habitat less natural   than the lobby of a Las Vegas hotel?

Yet here we gather, hoping for some glimpse   of the wild. And if this lions’ den is not,

as the brochures suggest, “a Mini African Safari,”   it’s still oddly impressive—towering rocks,

the pride stretching out across them,   and families crowding in for photo ops,

only inch-thick glass between them   and the oblivious beasts. Mostly the tourists shoot

their own faces looking back at them. Mostly    the lions loll, waiting for feeding time.

A recording tells us where they really live    (a ranch outside of town), and what they eat,

and how they’ve come to love or tolerate    their handlers. The recording tells us

that they get daily baths, their hair conditioned    and blown dry, and we chuckle politely,

picturing lions vain as Vegas showgirls.   Watching them lick meat delicately

from their handlers’ fingers, we are supposed   to see them, I think, as giant housecats. [End Page 55]

Then something unscripted: a lioness   strides across the rocks and bites her mate,

hard, on the shoulder. And how can he resist?   Mounting, he thrusts four times, then pulls away,

rolls over, and falls soundly asleep. The laughter   rippling through the crowd, the wives nudging husbands,

the voices of children asking what the joke is   become part of the joke. And will you laugh

if I tell you that I see something sexy   in it too—not in the lion’s pitiful work,

but in his mate’s open display of desire—   the singular wanting, not the loneliness after—

will your reflection slide across the space   between us and take my reflection’s hand? [End Page 56]

Chelsea Rathburn

Chelsea Rathburn’s poems have appeared in the Atlantic, Poetry, the New Republic, Ploughshares, and Five Points, among other journals. She is author of the collection The Shifting Line (University of Evansville Press, 2005), and in 2009 received an NEA Literature Fellowship in Poetry. She lives in Decatur, Georgia, with her husband, the poet Jim May.

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