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MIT
Poetry
Mauled Illusionist Goes Home
Jean Monahan
– Roy Horn, trainer and illusionist, attacked by his own white tiger at the Las Vegas Mirage hotel
True, I saw
It coming: my head's hot halo
In the steaming cavern,
The tiger's red tongue
Rolled like a boulder across
The opening, light leaving
For an instant and women grieving
Outside, desperate to unwrap
Me from death's swaddling:
That slaughter-of-innocents
We keep reading about, somewhere
So far off it has the quality of mirage
Until with our own eyes
We see through
Our invention and the scales
Fall. On a pall of teeth
I was hauled
From the glittering ring,
Beaten at my own game, tamed.
Off-stage, I healed
Myself, away from the crowds
Who pressed too close and loud,
Heart in mouth
For my throat in the maw,
My whip on the back
Of what we feed and love and pretend
Loves us back.
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