Noah Eli Gordon's #17 Tiger Poem!

Ladies and Gentleman, Noah Eli Gordon!

TIGER, TIGER

This is what I recall about snow

inside a very small tiger, about snow

in the shape of a very small tiger, about

the expansive relics, the symbols

sewn into silk, the story they told

& those who listened, who listening

were circled, enclosed in the weave,

assuming the miniscule stitch

causing the eye of a very small tiger

to appear as habitually open, the habits

with which one accords a very small tiger

the grace of brittle legs & ardent longing

& the habitat a very small tiger treks

collectively assist those who take

full responsibility & those who

assail one another gregariously, untigerlike,

in translating the outlandish texts,

weather stations & amplitude with which

one unmaking a very small tiger

transmits unrelated data into something

analogous to the microscopic computations

evolving the paradox of an exact replica

of a very small tiger into its opposite,

both non-very & un-small, lacking

striation, emblematic of a suppressed

emotion, of the movement a very small tiger

makes when protecting its young

or padding itself with snow

so as to appear larger, or succinctly,

a swallowing of the landscape in order

to avoid the inverse, the extinction

of a very small tiger & those

who claim thinking machines inevitably

revoke the omniscience one grants

the act of taking a very small tiger

by the tail, of superfluous yearning

for non-flesh-eating mammals & iridescent

oil slicks in the shape of a very small tiger,

upon which the snow falls gratuitously,

evoking the experience of physical action

as the architecture a very small tiger

emanates from, as the ink expended

therein & also the yarn, lion-envy

& the rusting of numerous weathervanes.