Back then the package still had bars,

[matsunosuperfan]

Back then the package still had bars,

we called them animal jail
crackers. By the age of seven
you had seen the circus, looked past pretty lights

and hurdy-gurdy men to see
the curtained truth: you knew
it had to hurt the polar bear, the ape

to live like this, the sawdust floor
whose splinters always bloomed with crystallizing piss,
that yellow, endless popcorn smell

instead of sky, a cage. You’d frown,
pull your ballet socks up, then eat them
anyway—how good it felt to feel no guilt

looking in the lion’s eyes
before you, in your shameless hunger
took another life.