Dancing Tiger

Performers painted like tigers and hunters dance to drumbeats
on the fourth day of Onam, an annual harvest festival of Kerala.

Dancing Tiger

Many farms have been buried,
yet the harvest fest is dazzling.

He’s one among the hundreds
of human tigers in the street.

A coat of varnish and tempera
powder conceals his skin. Pain,

paint odor, itch…he endures.
Drumbeats begin. He pounces,

shaking his hippo-belly. A
tumor also dances like death.

His fatigue and nausea vanish
in the artistic fervor. There are

hunters with bows and arrows,
dancing around him. As night

grows, waves of music abate
to end. Spectators go home

with the stars. Now he sits
in sweat under the bare sky.

First published in TypeHouse Literary Magazine