Moon Bear

The Asiatic black bear is captured and tortured for its bile — an ingredient used in traditional Chinese medicine.

She is the inkblot; stilled rage

beneath a pale fur moon, black shag

imprint on an operating table.

Her coarse pelt repelled water, shook

with droplets pierced by light.

It shifts here in blood mire,

guard hairs sinking reeds in wetland.

I feel the slip of that knife,

the underside; heat of beast skin

smeared with stars, our veined constellation

mapped by carnal pioneers.

Those who would reap for a feeling

syphon her alchemy, that celestial medicine

glitters from its little dish of sunlight.

Inside, I think the bear’s flesh

is still frightened. Her organs taut

as planets stopped mid-orbit.

The spaces between still seethe

to settle, dark and nebulous

they pulse around a metal catheter.

All trespassers expect a cavernous body

but stygian, she is an eerie midnight,

the kind a child might crawl from

blinking fistulas; a pair of startled eyes weeping bile.

All brutes are born confused as cruelty,

even the inhuman, look out for a kinder universe.

(Shortlisted for the Frogmore Press Poetry Prize — Published Sept. 2020)