Hyenas, v2

[Lizzie]

Hi, River. I don't know if you're still working on this piece, but I like it. I think you can still call it a sestina if you wanted -- it still has a lot of that structure, and people take liberties with form all the time. If someone complains....smack them. 

I've only written one sestina myself, but I also used Elizabeth Bishop's syllable counting. Just seemed like the thing to do at the time. You're right that it doesn't have to be in meter. 

Hyenas


March, summer for suckers, fills the café 
with those who dress in vintage, ration 
like it's wartime, out of habit scream
into their phones, "What a stove -- I think that stove was a good word choice. Again makes me think of Elizabeth Bishop's poem, but you've made it completely your own. 
of a city! Who can raise a child
in this heat?" All while the old hyena

skulks for food. Here in Addis Ababa, hyenas
fill the streets at night, scavenge the cafés
and hospitals for leftover children -- Unsettling without being overdone. Comes a little bit out of nowhere and delivers and unwelcome surprise. 
like beggars for scraps of himbasha. "Wasted rations",
thinks the beggar tending an old stove,
"all a mother's labor, all her screams -- I don't understand the mother's screams being dissolved by acid. I'll keep thinking about it and come back if I figure it out.  (Update, Sept. 18: childbirth, got it. With that in mind, I'm not sure that the beggar's response to their demise is quite right. I can understand why you wish you hadn't chosen "rations" -- it's a tough one)

dissolved by stomach acid." Every night, the screams
of hopeless drunks and lovemaking hyenas -- These hyenas are certainly having a good time after foraging for children   Seems like the tourists and the hyenas are having the best time of anybody. To me, it seems to imply a subtle connection between the groups. 
fill the air like smoke from earthen stoves
cooking charcoal to sell to the cafés
who serve their coffee authentic. Such fancy rations
for the tourists and their spoiled children: -- The trifling tourists deserve the sick burns you're giving them in this piece

imported coffee and himbasha loaves and the occasional child
to be brought back home and shown the wonders of screaming
into one's phone, complaining about such meager rations
as foreign bread and coffee! A hyena -- These four lines should be broken up, in my opinion. Reads like a run on sentence. I understand that the coffee and himbasha are not shown the wonders of screaming, but the sentence structure technically allows for this ambiguity. It's a minor quibble. So much coffee....so the coffee that's "authentic" is presumably locally grown and the imported is sold to locals? Just want to make sure that I'm tracking. Maybe add detail around the origin or roast of the coffee for interest and clarity. 
grins -- "Isn't she cute?" -- while the café
drives away the beggar from their stove

for the tourists to take their picture. "Back home, our stoves
are powered by electricity. They're safe enough for a child
to touch, so long as she's not metal." The owner of the café -- So, technically the "she's not metal" is accurate, but it feels almost like a joke which doesn't seem to fit the tone. 
musses his daughter's hair. "Come on, stop your screaming. -- Here's the part where the word choice of "screaming" starts to become overdone. The scenes you've presented here and sad and maddening enough that they don't need to be dialed up to 11. 
Out there in New York, there are no hyenas
and you won't have to save your rations

like it's wartime." "Baba, it's not about the rations
nor the burns on my arms this ancient stove
has all the right to inflict. Are you sure there are no hyenas
where you ask to send me? Where none of the children
seem to suffer, where none of them cry and scream?" -- As you noted yourself (and I can confirm as a parent), this is not a child's voice. Even an older child would not be sympathizing with the stove under such stress of displacement. They would have concerns about where they're going and if it's really going to be a better place, this is accurate. But, even little things like the neither/nor phrasing (which is correct) feels inauthentic, since kids don't speak with this kind of precision. They'll conjugate wrong, mispronounce things, mix up word order. Yeah, so simpler words, lightly incorrect sentence structure, and concrete concerns (the problem of human suffering wouldn't be stated that way unless the "child" was 16-18.) The rations would absolutely be a concern -- kids are focused on everyday things like this (family, comfort items, beds, food, friends). 
The sun sets. The tourists leave the café

with their new child. The grinning hyena -- I wonder about making the hyena into more of a sympathetic character here at the end by replacing "grinning" with something else or leaving it out entirely. It would make them more dynamic characters that way and provide a little bit of a plot twist. Then the tourists are the only ones getting what they want, since they seem to be the villains in this story. 
rubs her back against the dying stove, her rations
lying in a pile behind the café. Another scream.

Anyway, I hope you keep working on it. It's incredibly ambitious, and sestinas are notoriously difficult. Hopefully something here helps.

With the subject matter and the interesting form, it could become a standout piece. 

Good luck with it,

Lizzie