Arts Publications
Topic: RSS Feedmonkey 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.
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