Literature
Feeding Time...
Feeding Time at the Sultan's Menagerie
My mother is a hyena
and when the men come to feed us
she makes a terrible noise that I can hear
even from across the zoo,
but they think it is laughter
and they don't know that it is her
saying the same thing she always does:
"More, more! Why isn't there more?"
She cannot help herself;
She is a scavenger.
When I was born, she picked me up
in jaws that can crush an elephant femur
and for a second, the keepers that watched her
held their breath, thinking she was
about to eat me.
Somehow I was spared
and even the poison of her saliva,
the festering bacteria that kills days later,
only