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Poetry

The Museum-going Cannibal

by Yahia Lababidi

Upright specimen, looking to be fine-tuned
on weekends by the civilizing influence of beauty,
standing still and reflecting in the refracted light
of another’s encounter with the sublime.

All polite smiles and hushed appreciation,
sliding up to some mounted painting and tilting
its head to sip and drink in the brushstrokes, yet
downright vicious throughout the week.

Hankering after a bit of meat and blood
in the shape of a live woman or a dead man.
Never mind that they know them or not,
at times, any old body warm or cold will do.

What a mixed bag of bones: when not frenzied
and teetering at the abyss of some bestial appetite,
turning around and donating blood to unknowns:
as charitable and vulnerable as a winged thing.

Yahia Lababidi’s new book of essays, Trial By Ink: From Nietzsche to Bellydancing is available now from Amazon etc.