The Panda

posted May 15, 2007

(after Nakajima Ton)

I lie on my right side, left side, eat the Oreos
children throw me. I picture opaline brooks
and cool shoots of grass, paw the shed scales
that waft from the neighboring enclosure,
watch the tortoises' sinister plodding, weighed down
with their boxes of reptilian sin. At first
I wondered how I could have become this ridiculous
bear, but now the question that haunts me
is how I could have ever been a man.

Graeme Bezanson grew up in Nova Scotia but now live in Brooklyn, where he works with young men with cognitive disorders. He is the editor of Cold Front.