For Saff, made famous on Netflix (poem)

Here is a poem I wrote on Good Friday morning, in response to an article I read about Saff, and after a two-day binge-watch of Tiger King on Netflix. Saff feels to me like a voice of relative calm amid the furor.

For Saff

The most anybody could claim to come to know

about you would be by what you look like and how

you talk when you’re on screen. Reality tv

gets you to rethink life. Before Joe Exotic

made it onto Netflix, he cared enough to give

you refuge and a job. Manspreading on a green

plastic Adirondack chair near the zoo tool shed,

flanked by discarded propane tanks and jerry cans,

by stained tarps, building scrap, and one chrome-rimmed spare wheel,

your black trucker’s cap turned backwards, you take a drag

on a freshly lit cigarette and shake your head,

brushing off some producer’s glib, mis-pronouned prompt.

The fact is you returned to work within a week

of having had your lower left arm torn half off

by an honest-to-fuck tiger. You say you can’t

expect actual animals, let alone people,

to check their instincts. What happens, happens. Keep chill.

Better to accept what you’ll never overcome,

the unjust husbandry of this imprisoned world.

                                             Good Friday, in the year of COVID-19

If you're interested, here is a link to an image taken from one of Saff's confessionals in Tiger King; this is the image I'm describing in the poem.

Here is some video from Tiger King in which Saff describes his accident: