Vipers vipe another's life
by the flavor of their bites.
Constrictors construct another's death
by stacking slim breath upon breath until no more is left.
Adders addle able bodies into meal,
and Rattlers crackle should you come too near,
but not in here.
Boomslangs sling their back jaws into prey, to chew the venom in.
Black mambas leap even at thawed white mice.
This is where a permanent tranquilized matinee meets a life sentence,
all year long and every year hence.
Fang glands churn and produce venom to no productive use.
Serpent jaws pitch surge and yaw to locate the same frozen rabbit as yesterweek and the procession of all the weeks which preceded.
Though kneeless, to me they seem to be kneeling,
praying for prey to cross their path.
I make my way past the Coral Snake, Anaconda, Python and Asp, all lax, medicated or meditating on this wilderness where their hisses are merely reminiscent gasps.
Through the anesthetized malaise, we observe the faces of a most ancestral and mammalian fear, and they can gaze back at us, but rarely do, reduced as they are to being expensive jewels, on display behind the fingerprint smudged windows in the Snake House.
