monkey house, The

American Poetry Review, The, Jan 1996 by Komunyakaa, Yusef

He pressed his face against the bars,

watching the biggest male macaque

mount a statuesque female.

She gazed at the cage floor

& he looked up past

rafters of leaves & fiberglass,

squinting toward a sundial.

They were rocking back & forth,

grunting a chorus of muffled laughs.

A father covered his daughter's eyes

with both hands, but let his two sons look.

An old woman kept tugging

her husband's sleeve

as he stood munching Cracker

Jacks, searching for the toy

pistol or spinning top

at the bottom of the box.

He watched, stroking his beard,

a hundred yards away from the crowd

eating noontime sandwiches & sipping

thermoses of coffee. Joggers worked

the air with arms & legs,

& it seemed to him the monkeys

were making love to the rhythms

of the city. Also, he still can't

say why, but he was running

the term ethnic cleansing over

& over in his mind, like a stone

polishing itself in a box of sand.

There were tears in his eyes,

& he felt like he'd returned

to the scene of a crime.

When their bodies began to tremble

down to a split second, the other

monkeys began to slap the male

& beat his head like a drum.

Then, lost among the absurd

clocks, he turned to watch

leaves as they began to fall.

Yusef Komunyyasaa's latest book, Neon Vernacular, published by Wesleyan University Press, was awarded the 1994 Pulitzer Prize and the Kingsley Tufts Award. He also receive the 1994 William Faulkner Prizer (Universite de Rennes). He teaches creative writing and literature at Indiana University. In February, Yusef Komunyakaa will visit Philadelphia for four days of reading and workshops at Central High School and the Community College of Philadelphia. These activities are sponsored by the Painted Bride Art Center.