Ash Magazine Issue 1

We Glimpse the Zoo

  By Vanya Schroeder

  In their boxes the lions stir like martinis, only continually, as though nothing they can see will give them pause, and they are still wild. This blindness both enhances their nobility and destroys it, and you kind of want to say, like in the cartoons, “aah, shaddup,” or “hey youze pipe down,” which at least lets you know what side of the fence you’re standing on; the right side. You can saunter off with a different kind of recklessness than the lions know and never worry about their retribution, which, admittedly, would come slowly and weakly no matter where you stood. After all, these particular lions haven’t had any more exercise than this pacing since 1955, when they were installed—like a washer/dryer—in a different world when they looked out on seas of stiff bouffant for lions to dream of sailing through in their bloody way. Now you must look more familiar to them; the look in your eyes is hungrier, your fur is soft and free. You are more on the hunt than any creature here. Everyone’s after something and that something is your share of the action.

  Back and forth and back and forth, the lions’ share of the action is proportionate to their musculature, very small, and their eyes show that they know. But their mouths, black with gums and the zookeeper’s horsemeat, and the pink tongues rolling out to taste a drop of your sweat in the air, and behind both of these the healthy remembering teeth, do not. Not very long now before some employee is lost, his mind on the right side of the fence and the rest of him on the other side.

  Because the peacocks were not caged they might as well have been pigeons, except to the children (mostly boys) who chased and plucked their all seeing tail feathers.

  The aquarium costs an extra two-fifty and so is a dim, forgotten place. The problem is, the fish are local, from the Mississippi and its tributaries, and are uniformly gray or at best, shot with silver, and no one wants to pay extra for that. They drift. Their inhuman eyes glare horizontally through their glass meeting no one’s on the other side, and that’s just about dandy by them. The man who takes the imaginary toll is also tinged a little gray because too much light makes them grow.

  How he passes his time:

  1) He eats his lunch throughout the day, saving either a peach or a pickle for last.

  2) He works out a complex and, he secretly believes, fearsome series of anagrams which tells the game smith the exact time and place of the heat death of the universe.

  3) He plans his ascension, taking place in the dog days shortly after the heat death of the universe (see #2).

  Yes, violent is the word for Chester Meeks, although when he goes home his ex-wife’s floral legacy could give you a headache.

  The leopard was new, that day. “The leopard reminds me of you, my dear, the same ferocious teeth and gums,” I said, unmindful of your squeamishness about mouths. It was a great effort to look out the sides of my eyes at the smaller you, walking away from me. The leopard has great padded feet.

  I speak of how we met, to myself, here in this asphalted approximation of jungle, with the un-caged peacocks hooting. Or was it evening, and the owls? Impossible to recall now without your help. There was some other detail itching me somewhere until your back was just now turned to me, and in being able to look at your squarely, your burnished hair—ah, I saw it clearly.

  On some later meeting, a drunken you lopped off a lock of hair: “What do you want from me?” both of us really knowing that despite what I may have answered, I had to content myself with the deadest part of you, and later drank a strand of it with my tea, and even so it stuck in the back and I had to take a gulp to get it down. The next night another strand: a careful long one. On the fourth night I was seized by the future and resolved to put away all your hair lest I should eat it, all that you willingly gave. This was not the devouring I had wanted, not the right wantonness. Pacing I could almost hear you being devoured by another, or, if the sounds were all my imagination, myself. I dreamed. The leopard paces back and forth, with the large feet I would like to have holding down your neck. But there you are, yards away, caged by nothing but air. Air and hair together again, a little complicated by my digestive system.

  I call, “Look! Look! These cages are for dumb beasts only, not human beings!” You don’t apologize, but you do idle back, shrugging. You are held by something then. I take in my hand the hair at the back of your neck and pretend I am massaging you there. You are under my hand, so close it is like the first time we met, and the owls. Not exactly on this spot, but close. Let us walk, my hand on your neck, to the monkey house so I can place my feet on the spot where they stood that long-ago day. Will they, I wonder, trace different steps from here, only to find themselves back in front of the chimpanzees yet again, supporting a laughing head, and is there anywhere new they may hope to go?

  I have been offered a job in Minneapolis. I fear it is too far from you and the chimps you so resemble. But, I am instituting a new system. There is my associate Mr. Johnson, over by the eagle garden cage. --Hello, Mr. Johnson! --Hello, Sir. Mr. Johnson is really an excellent complement to our team. His references tell me he is a man to be reckoned with, who does not take no for an answer, and in private conversation he has confessed to me his motto:

  But here he is, and our private conversation must remain so. Ah well, please take it from me that his is a very bold, a very fearless personality. Perhaps—even fearsome. Madam, Mr. Johnson, and vice versa. How do you do all around. Yes. Now over here, we have the wolf pen.

  1 “The body always heals.”