Just Moo Deng

Poetry
Written By Madailín Burnhope (she/her)

Studies have recently found

the hippopotamus to be omnivorous. 

If forced to tear at carcasses, 

so help us, she will. Jarring, when 

we were led to see her kind

as vegetarian, occasionally 

disgruntled blubbery cattle

who will pursue meat

only if it happens to be trucking

ten tourists and a 4x4 too close 

to her carefully curated wet space

(and who could blame her?).

No fear, she won’t hurt you

if you fall in love with her

through a screen, in a zoo.

This one (roly-poly pill bug grey, 

slow growing military-grade leather 

over her pink, defenceless breast

as if to say, Wait until I'm older,

when I’m done sucking my keeper’s thumb, 

when you’ll learn what these jaws were for)

is, for now at least, just Moo Deng,

stamping, tonguing, tusking

her way into us,

manipulating only the water

and a blushing pink subset 

of internet users under 

her pad, pad, paw.

Madailín Burnhope (she/her)

Madailín Burnhope (she/her) is a disabled, queer, transfeminine poet based in Warwickshire, UK. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Magma, Under The Radar, Ink Sweat and Tears, Gallus, Poetry Wales, Best British Poetry 2011 (Salt), Stairs and Whispers: D/deaf and Disabled Poets Write Back (Nine Arches), The Poetry Review, and Versus Versus (Bloodaxe). Her debut collection was Species (Nine Arches). She is currently working on A Miniature Book of Monsters, from which comes her Forward Prize 'highly commended' poem 'You Wouldn't Last Five Minutes as a Woman.'

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