Nebuchadnezzar

by Jonathan McGregor

What’s the caloric density of grass? 
I never thought to ask
until I gnawed it to its roots. 
I had cattle by the thousands –  
damned inefficient.  
Definition of a man: 
ruminant hominid, 
chewing on his world. 

The Magi tell me logic makes us 
different from the beasts.  
Not our two-legged frame, 
capacity for rule and being ruled. 
We’re the only animal who goes 
mad and knows it. On all fours, 
I snuffle out the scent of God.  

My eyes roll back. I see the Hebrew 
Daniel in a pit. He kissed 
a lioness good-night and slept  
against her armor-piercing jaw.  
Morning, he rises to pasture  
the cats. They tear great clumps  
of grass and chew and watch  
the flocks without a trace of lust.

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Jonathan McGregor's creative work has appeared in Gulf Coast, Image Journal, Ruminate Magazine, Relief Journal, Dappled Things, Genealogies of Modernity, and Hyped on Melancholy. He is the author of the academic book Communion of Radicals: The Literary Christian Left in Twentieth-Century America (LSU Press, 2021). He teaches writing at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, and is a poetry editor at War, Literature, and the Arts.