“Lion Queen,” excerpt from Hyena Subpoena

Catherine Kidd, BA (Eng. & creative writing) 94, MA (Eng.) 98, is a Montreal writer and performer. Her poem series Sea Peach toured to Toronto Harbourfront’s World Stage and the Edinburgh Fringe. She has taught creative writing at Concordia, through Blue Met and through the QWF. A chapter of her novel Missing the Ark was nominated for a Journey Prize. Kidd’s work has appeared in Matrix, This magazine, Toronto Quarterly and P.E.N. International. Her poem “Human Fish” opened the Spier Arts Poetry Festival in Cape Town, South Africa, in 2007, which inspired Hyena Subpoena (Wired on Words/Popolo Press).

Lion Queen, from Hyena Subpoena

Ode to a dying lioness
Is hope lost, Lady? Pride abandon ye by the side of the road,
lioness dying alone. On your face still traces of predator grace,
never losing your feline refine even as flies encircle your crown
like vultures. They’d pluck out even the eyes of the blind. But I
too am a scavenger here, gathering scraps of this ravishing culture
‘til my eyes are filled, spill over and still can’t believe what I’m seeing.
A dying lioness – no surprise I’ve never seen one,
but neither do I wish to be the very last thing she sees.

We’ve slowed the rented Go, windows rolled down
letting russet dust settle equally on all of us –
two Canadian aliens, one South African lioness.
We don’t choke the engine though, now it’s growling
at the tattered cat and it doesn’t feel right, listening
to the life rattle out of her like a gate chain locking out
the night. Not long ago she was top of her game,
top of the food chain, now slowly consumed
by consumption. Lying low to the ground
like a pup tent. Skin stretched thin over bony ribs,
black lips mutter back to her heart ‘til the very last beat –
when the fire in her lion eyes freezes in the heat –
and her sight sinks like shiny sunstones, deep,
in river-beds, beneath her lids. The arid air throws
dust over my vision and I swear I see her leaping at
the sun where long ago she must have come from.

Yet none so young deserve this, to wither of illness,
invisible nemesis crippling dignity. She may be a mother
with youngsters to feed, like any other hunter gathering
food for her brood of hungry cubs. But who’d bother
to let the local pride of lions know that the flesh
of those Cape buffalo contains a fatal dose
of bovine tuberculosis? And, that this tenacious germ
had recently learned how to leap to her species easily?
So, it seems our Lion Queen is being eaten by something she ate.
There may be no greater tragedy, but in the state of nature it’s
consumer beware – even on the savannah, It’s a jungle out there.
Did she feed poison kill to her children as well? Was she guilty of
involuntary regicide, when the King of her pride laid claim to the
lion’s share of the prey, leaving behind just the nasty bits only
hyenas would eat anyway? But therein lies the irony of infectious
disease. Viruses couldn’t care less about social hierarchy –
given equal opportunity, diseases would eat every body equally.

But look, how the eyes of the lioness suddenly widen awake!
She’s taking me in, never taking her glittering focus away.
In a better day, I might’ve been breakfast. I’ve heard certain prides
have acquired a taste for us homo sapiens –
maybe fancy apes make a tasty break from antelopes
such as those skinny impalas, doe-eyed and nubile like
a shy herd of school girls, knobbly knees even wider
than their thighs.

[…]

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