Brutality

In this corner a he-man, bare-chested, 

winking at the women.  In that, a brute fact, 

isolated, unexplained, a she-bear — 

her non-retractable claws (if she still had them) 

gloved in red; her sublime growl 

muzzled in her throat; her neck, 

its brown bristles chafed by a thick 

leather leash, passed through an overhead pulley, 

which would snatch her from the jaws 

of defeat or victory into her next match.  

Her murky eyes, though, were free 

to roam or roll.  If I dared to look into them, 

from as far back as today, what would I find?  

Not brutality.  

No lack of reason akin to insanity 

in her failure to grasp why 

she could never either eat or be eaten.  

Nor an unrelenting cruelty in her soft gaze, 

which robbed us of a hateful target 

and rubbed our noses in our steaming frenzy — 

not only the sweating carnies and hooting crowd 

but squeamish me, my date squeezing my arm, 

the pair of us rooting wordlessly against our kind 

for the she-bear to pummel that hairy bully.  

I’m not sure what, but I do think I'd find — 

What’s the word? — an imbrutality in her 

not being able to stand to look at us.