How to Kill an Elephant

They executed Topsy on a winter day 
at Coney Island’s soon-to-be Luna Park

in an event open only to the press and select
invited guests and in particular Edwin S. Porter

of Edison Studios. She was a problem elephant.
She had crushed a man to death who had burned 

her trunk with the heat of his cigar and so
they resolved to strangle her and to fit copper

sandals carrying 6,600 volts of alternating current
to each of her feet and to feed her cyanide

carrots. This is how to kill an elephant
far from home who had come to America,

as most did, badly, and had rankled for all
of her almost thirty years until she stiffened

and smoked and fell like a fainting goat
to wait, at the film’s end, for the ropes to move.