Ecopoesia

Endangered

RĂ©gis Bonvicino

The maned wolf is a tame creature

fleeing whenever threatened

he is solitary

averse to sunlight, timid

 

he hates and avoids cities

to flee from the

increasingly inevitable

feral dog attacks

 

he crosses highways

and is almost always run over by cars

an omnivore with weak jaws,

he feeds on, eggs, fruit, and mice

 

sometimes, when he’s lost,

he scavenges for food in street garbage cans

choking on pieces of plastic

bottles or styrofoam he’s chewed on

 

he cuts himself or dies when biting

into fluorescent light bulbs

or swallowing electric wires

he dies from licking insecticides

 

or leftover paint

or swallowing expired drugs

or disposable

needles and syringes

 

docile, guileless,

he is easily captured and killed

by fur traffickers

when he then howls

 

 

 

Bonvicino, Régis. “Endangered.” Trans. Odile Cisneros. Beyond the Wall. Los Angeles: Green Integer, 2017. pp. 135-37.

 

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