rusted signs say:
there are dangerous animals! please don’t near.
what animals?
a far-off building,
birds squawk for thawing.
a weary panda pushes
his head against a tree
and we cheer.
not far from here,
erasure, erasure,
forgotten hutong,
abandoned malls.
the sky—grey like all
the cement walls.
the cages, empty.
yet we take pictures.
Meg Eden Kuyatt teaches creative writing at colleges and writing centers. She is the author of the 2021 Towson Prize for Literature winning poetry collection “Drowning in the Floating World,” the forthcoming “obsolete hill” (Fernwood Press) and children’s novels including the Schneider Family Book Award Honor-winning “Good Different,” and the forthcoming “The Girl in the Walls” (Scholastic, 2025). Find her online at megedenbooks.com.