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"There is a lot to discover in Darkly Told. It doesn’t offer immediate answers, nor is it meant to do so, but it will repay careful listening. Hopefully, this chapbook will be successful enough to prompt Alicia Cole to make a few more. Fans are better off for its appearance." - Dead Reckonings No. 18
Tigers In Cages
by stephanie roberts
Early, we learn a fear of lost—of taken.
Tigers lie in cages stripes for the striped
—redundancies of capture.
Eager and regret pace rapt; cage to cage every
wild face bares the same barred rage.
Teacher makes them buddies to ensure
against lost and lone,
And as two, they are taken with the red panda,
white rhino, black mamba.
Their sticky fingers interlocking origami
prayers against lost
Which they are—away from the class
wide-eyed and wandering.
They'll be found, aging in grace, or wasted
in age, with love managed safely, as iron by iron
They climb the cages made or entered
Where the hope is for a lost that finds self
And (against fear) taken.
stephanie roberts has work that appears or will appear, this year, in The Stockholm Review of Literature, Reunion: The Dallas Review, Shooter Literary Magazine (UK), Room Magazine (Canada), Burning House Press (UK), The Inflectionist Review, After the Pause, Rat's Ass Review, Arsonist Magazine, Waxing & Waning, The Thing Itself, and Nano Text an anthology published by Medusas's Laugh Press. She is also the self-published author of a volume of poetry, The Melting Potential of Fire, and a book of short fiction, As We Are.