The Lion Tamer by Paul Durcan
I’m currently listening to the audiobook of Sara Gruen’s Water for Elephants (and quite enjoying it). Since the book is about a circus, and I just revisited this poem in I Feel a Little Jumpy Around You, it seemed I had to share it.
The Lion Tamer
By Paul Durcan
“Well, what do you work at?” she said to me after about six months
Of what a mutual journalist friend was pleased to call our “relationship.”
“I’m a lion tamer,” I replied, offhandedly as possible,
Hoping she’d say: “Are you really?”
Instead she said: “I don’t believe you.”
I jumped up from my chair and I strode across the room,
Stumbling over a wickerwork magazine rack.
I knelt on one knee at her feet and gazed up at her:
Slowly she edged away from me and backed out the door
And glancing out the window I saw her bounding down the road,
Her fair hair gleaming in the wind, her crimson voice growling.
I kicked over a stool and threw my whip on the floor.
What I had hoped for from her was a thorough mauling.
But she preferred artistic types. She had no appetite for lion tamers.
