jr

The Rhinoceros Poem
by JR

1993, enter a Russian Girl
obsessed with a rhinoceros
at the Franklin Park Zoo.

Like clockwork after lessons,
she plunked her pink pug nose
against the dirty glass,

watching the bursts of air
from his nostrils
in complete awe.

The smudges
of her fingerprints
piled up,
one day to the next,
gray glass gone white.

The broom man hosed
giant crap down a drain
to Lord-knows-where.

Rhino's massive gray flanks
rested on beige painted concrete.

The crust of illness clawed at Rhino's black eye,
a Mr. Rogers picture-picture gone wrong.

Personally, I have always wondered
about the scalping of rhinoceros horns,

and is it something painless
like a haircut,

or does it torture them
like the sawing off of a limb?

What torture
left the Russian girl here at our zoo,

and what pain
will take her from us in the end?