If Siegfried And Roy Had Never Met
by Caitlin Doyle

No flaming ring. No disappearing elephant.
  Siegfried behind a circus booth in Munich, half

an apple on his palm. He holds it out to show
  the children it’s real. See the seeds.

Roy at the Bremen Zoo, locking
  eyes with the tigers, making sounds

that straighten their ears. They tilt
  their heads. Their tails craze with flicking.

             And Siegfried: a silk scarf in his other

hand. He whips it through the air
   until it blurs into a wheel. The apple will be whole

again on the count of three. One. Two.
   But an ice cream bell. The children running away.

           And Roy: reaching through the bars.

No theatre rigged with mirrors, no double-
   chambered boxes. It’s only in Siegfried’s dream

a trapdoor opens on him like a mouth,
   only in Roy’s dream a mouth closes on him

           like a trapdoor. The tiger’s teeth

sink into nothing, obscured
  by smoke. The applause is never ending.