Keith Flynn: The Hyena Men

Politics is the art of the possible,
or the next best accommodation.
Take, for instance, the spotted hyenas
who have their own backdoor
into the walled city of Harar, Ethiopia.

One of the planet’s most feared packs,
for 500 years they have taken the
butcher’s unwanted meat and bones,
delicately eating from the fingers
of grizzled citizens, and in return,

turning away other dangerous predators,
with violent persuasion, from the court
yards and mosques, the schools,
and outskirts of the city, in thrall
to the jungle’s denizens and their

dire proximity to the African plain.
Dragging the scraps to the nearby caves,
the chattering hyenas churr and cackle,
sanitizing the city by feeding on its
organic refuse and cheered by spectators

who take pictures as the hyena men
cluck in an improvised dialect that
the four-legged scavengers understand,
a mongrel language mixing English
and Oromo. Their pact is celebrated

every year on the Day of Ashura when
the leaders of the pack are presented
with porridge prepared with pure butter.
Should the salivating alpha hyenas eat
more than half the offering, there is

an oracular significance to the towns
people, portending a prosperous
New Year, and should the pack refuse,
then people pull together in the shrines
to pray themselves purple in hopes

of averting the oncoming pestilence
or famine. Elegies are composed on
this Day of Atonement, commemorating
the death of Muhammad’s grandson,
martyred in the Battle of Kabul, and

the Shia make pilgrimages in his name.
The Sunni mark the holiday with another
strange coincidence, celebrating the
moment when Moses raised his staff
and Allah parted the Red Sea, allowing

the Israelites to pass across the dry
river basin with their soft sandals
before the waves crashed in upon
the heads of the soldiers and the horses,
chasing the same former slaves in

the name of the Pharoah. The Shia
mourn the slaughter of Husayn Ali
near the Euphrates River, his family
trampled. The Sunni celebrate, with
fasting, the miracle of Moses.

The spotted hyenas of Ethiopia
know nothing of man’s machinations,
only the sweet smell of their cast off
meat once the sun has slipped behind
the mountain and the cave walls cooled

as the desert dogs line single file
to slip through the broken crevice
in the walls surrounding the city
of Harar, where the true believers
and tourists wait, breathless to know

the appetite of the panting hyenas
and the laughing gods alike, both
shivering in their spotted fur,
beneath a cloak of stars, submitting
themselves in order to be adored.

Copyright 2023 Keith Flynn

Keith Flynn is the author of eight books, most recently The Skin of Meaning (Red Hen Press, 2020), and Prosperity Gospel: Portraits of the Great Recession (RedHawk Publications, 2021). Flynn is founder and managing editor of The Asheville Poetry Review, which began publishing in 1994.