I saw my own mother, captive
gorilla in the humid luminescence
of the pit at the zoo.
Some sort of fight was going on.
she was cowering under a chlorinated
waterfall, wrists to her ears, red-eyed.
Punks among us on the public concourse
taunted my father. He rampaged
round the jungle of house plants,
Prehensile feet slipping on patio slabs,
slamming into the steel door.