Alyson Faye

TIGER-WATCHING AT YORKSHIRE WILDLIFE PARK

Eagerly we hurry,
free of our grey boxes
for the day’s entertainment.

Anaesthetised.
Caged.
Transported.
To our drab, windy shores.

Our sat.nav got us here,
Our iPods jangle in the
manure-stained air.

From metal walkways
we gape and gawk.
While you pace,
your miry compound's ground.

What do you see,
when you look out?
Your stripes interlacing
with the wire mesh?

Disdainful, of us-
a clicking, chattering,
rowdy group of bipeds.

Do you yearn for
your topaz jungles,
moist with prey?

A tail flicks.
We are dismissed.
The mud records
your departure.

We drive home,
through taupe housing estates,
around snaking ring roads,
switching on our headlights.

Night draws in.
We are both prey and
hunter, in our metal
boxes on wheels.


Alyson reads "Tiger Watching...":



Subscribe to Channel 52 for first view of new videos.


Alyson confesses: "This poem was written after a visit to Yorkshire Wildlife Park, home to the rare Amur tigers, and though it provides a rare opportunity to view these animals and the programme of the park is all about conservation and breeding—I couldn't help but feel it's a crime to cage these beautiful animals for the purposes of a day's entertainment for us. It is a complicated and emotive issue."


ALYSON FAYE lives in West Yorkshire with her family, including 3 rescue cats. She teaches creative writing classes and works part time as an editor/proofreader. She is one of the writers in Women in Horror Annual 2, (2017); her stories can be downloaded at www.alfiedog.com as well as being available in numerous ezines and on sites like zeroflash, Tubeflash, 101 words, three drops from a cauldron and (most often) at The Horror Tree (www.horrortree.com). Her debut Flash collection, Badlands, from indie publisher Chapeltown Books is available to buy on Amazon. Her poetry has appeared in varied small press magazines like iota, Bennison's Books Indra's Net, Raw Edge, jotters united, and later this year on the Nature Poetry-inspired website Words for the Wild.