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Jul 02, 2026
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Lions In Poetry
Above on a branch, a Blue Jay shits
on the grass.
The blades of grass don’t cooperate
with the man’s vision.
Me, walking the dog on the sidewalk.
He, bent like a convertible after
a head-on collision, top still down,
edging his lawn with scissors.
On the ground, a Robin
is determined to devour a worm
that’s silent as a poet going about his craft,
although being pulled apart.
Mute, deaf, and blind,
the worm doesn’t know that water
has a name but knows its feel.
Death is never unexpected in worm country,
but it is resisted.
On the street, the ants have created
a feast from squirrel carrion, a creature
that lacked curiosity about the weight
of tires. The employee at the tire store
secretly wants to fly. The strength
in his wings comes from lifting and fitting
white sides facing out. A rat lives
in a corner of the store it visits nightly.
It lives as a mute but it’s not deaf and blind,
scrounging for scraps in the dark, relying
on sense, not sight —
a worm in rat’s clothing
A biology adjunct, pressed
into temporary service
in the English department, sits in his laboratory,
stitching together syntax from dead parts,
hoping the monster will amaze the students.
He’s read a little Stevens, but more Levis.
Sitting behind a plate glass window, he gazes
at the fog-shrouded Savannah
where a lion lies hidden in the grass.
The lion doesn’t ponder life’s mysteries,
doesn’t wonder about knowledge
and how it’s acquired.
His instincts engage a more pressing matter
that he sees clearly. He leaps. Glass shatters.
Shards of two worlds together at last.
— W. Barrett Munn, Jul 02, 2026
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About This Poem
Last Few Words: Fifth revision and a change in title.
Style/Type: Free verse
Review Request Direction: Is the internal logic consistent?
Review Request Intensity: I want the raw truth, feel free to knock me on my back
Editing Stage: Polished draft
Critiques
neopoet
5 days 16 hours ago
Neopoet AI (premium) [2026-06]
The below is a computer-generated response from Neo, Neopoet’s AI:
The poem's strongest move is its chain of linked lives, where one creature's frame of reference becomes the next: the worm that knows water's feel but not its name, the rat that is "a worm in rat's clothing," the adjunct stitching syntax "from dead parts." This associative logic gives the poem a spine, so that the closing leap of the lion feels earned rather than arbitrary, and the shattering glass genuinely brings "two worlds together at last." The recurring language of muteness, sense, and sight is doing real thematic work, tying together the worm, the rat, and finally the human observer, and it rewards a second reading.
The Frankenstein image is the poem's cleverest turn, and it mostly lands. The adjunct in his "laboratory," pressed into service in an unfamiliar department, "stitching together syntax from dead parts," recasts the anxious teacher as a maker of monsters, and the phrase "hoping the monster will amaze the students" is quietly funny and sad at once. The reference to Larry Levis alongside Stevens signals the poem's own lineage of associative, image-driven meditation, and that self-awareness suits the material.
Where the poem is less sure of itself is in its opening. The Blue Jay and the "man's vision" and the "convertible after a head-on collision" arrive before the poem has established the pattern that later gives its images their charge. That convertible simile, in particular, is vivid but hard to parse: it is not clear whether the man is bent like a wrecked car or the lawn is, and the "top still down" detail, though striking, competes for attention with the edging scissors rather than clarifying the picture. Consider whether these first eight lines earn their place, or whether the poem could begin nearer the Robin and the worm, where the governing idea actually starts.
A second point concerns consistency of address in the muteness motif. The worm is "Mute, deaf, and blind," and the rat "lives as a mute but it's not deaf and blind" — a deliberate and effective variation. But the phrase "a worm in rat's clothing" lands on the page without punctuation, and its isolation suggests it wants more weight than the surrounding lines give it. A small adjustment to its placement or lineation might let that inversion register fully, since it is one of the poem's key hinges.
Finally, the ending's ambition is clear, but "Shards of two worlds together at last" leans on abstraction ("two worlds") right after the concrete, kinetic "He leaps. Glass shatters." The poem trusts its images elsewhere; the last line might trust them here too, rather than naming the meaning outright. What the two worlds are has already been dramatized, and the reader can feel it without being told.
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W. Barrett Munn
5 days 6 hours ago
Neo Critique
Once again, excellent critique.
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