Tag: Poetry About Animals

Dan MacIsaac: “Garden Spider”

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Garden Spider

She spins her
own soft maze,

snare haloed
like an old radio

microphone
ON THE AIR,

rippling thin
aural rings,

oval waves
of sonic silk.

At the transit heart,
catching fine

veins of light,
she waits

for the pluck
of a male,

tiny harpist,
blindly orphic,

so tender
on a woven

strand of her
high-strung web

that will pulse
under his touch

like a radiant
and terrible lyre.

Note: The diminutive suitor, even if successful in courtship, often becomes dinner
to his cannibalistic mate.

About the Author: Dan MacIsaac writes from Vancouver Island. Brick Books published his collection, Cries from the Ark. His poetry has appeared in many journals and anthologies, including, most recently, in America, Valley Voices, Manzano Mountain Review and Poetica’s Rosenberg Award Collection.

Image Credit: Jan Vincentsz van der Vinne “A Spider” (late 17th–early 18th century) Public domain image courtesy of Artvee

Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal: “The Green Lizard”

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The Green Lizard

I felt like a prisoner
in my dreams. I was
under lock and key
at a prison in Paris
like Verlaine, Villon,
and Voltaire. In a dark
cell drawing sketches
was a green lizard.
It spoke French and a
little Spanish. The
sketches were painted
on the walls. The green
lizard was my cell mate.
Its bleeding tongue was
its brush and the walls
were graffitied with red
moons, red stars, and
red mountains. Through
a window in the prison,
the green lizard would
come in and leave through
the bars in the window.
The prison guards would
beat me mercilessly
every morning, never
believing that it was
the green lizard that
bloodied the walls with art.
They asked me where
I hid the paint and why
the sketches were red.

About the Author: Born in Mexico, Luis lives in California and works in the mental health field. His poems have appeared in Blue Collar Review, Escape Into Life, Kendra Steiner Editions, Mad Swirl, and Unlikely Stories. His latest poetry book, Make the Water Laugh, was published by Rogue Wolf Press in 2021.

Image Credit: Thomas Barbour “Dasia Smaragdinum” (1912) Public domain image courtesy of Artvee