Alexa Mergen
USA
| Alexa Mergen
was born in Iowa in 1967 and grew up in Washington, DC,
spending summers with family in Nevada and Utah. She earned
a BA in English from UC-Berkeley and an MA in English from
UC-Irvine where she studied poetry translation. An essayist
and freelance writer as well as a poet, she lives in the
Elmhurst neighborhood of Sacramento. Her work appears in
Nevada Magazine, High Country News, Sow's Ear Poetry Review, Kritya, the Redwood Coast Review
and other online and print
venues. |
One Shroud
(for Mandor and Sudqua of the Baghdad Zoo)
Heels clip clop like hooves of ungulates
or soldiers stepping
in time. Baghdad’s looted, the zoo included.
Imagine clatter of camels and horses, cries of monkeys and bears,
under cover of night stolen or freed. Nine big cats
left to starve, dun and striped hides hanging
like drapes on mirrors in the deceased’s homes.
Tiger from jungle, lion from plain:
In man’s concrete land of guns and knives the keeper keeps:
animals gnaw bones and become them.
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© Copyright,Alexa
Mergen.
All Rights Reserved. |