As sure as there are mouths within mouths
he will hunt later than he wished
but scraps for all if he gets lucky
A growling warmth
and a growing brightness
bathed in the auspices
the elder curls
as felines
have always curled
even though lookout
is no longer covered
not even by a lone sentry
the old man’s royal eyes
already half-masting it
beneath the day’s first photons
tired now as they
had opened hours before
in the dark
surveys the savannah
before sunrise he thinks
old lions weren’t meant for this.
Paul Corman-Roberts is the author of the Firecracker nominated poetry collection Bone Moon Palace (Black Lawrence 2021) and the recently launched 19th Street Station Volume 2 (Collapse Press 2025.) His short story “Cemetery One Nighter” was nominated for the 2025 Best American Short Fiction award. He currently teaches workshops for the San Francisco Creative Writing Institute and the Oakland Unified School District while raising his hellspawn in Oakland CA. He occasionally fills in as drummer for the US Ghostal Service, Jen Blowdryer’s Punk/Soul and his own project, The There Their They’re.
the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

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