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Currajah

[a Walleah Press blog]

ANDREW PLUNKETT

two poems

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Fox Hunt

 

1.

Summer, 1933.

 

A deep loch

Bubbles and boils.

Above the waterline, the air

Bends and folds

Like a house of mirrors.

 

A dinosaur comes up for air.

The River Ness splits open

And a legend forks out over flood plains.

2.

Bass Strait straddles

A port-bound ship.

 

A flash of brick-red fur.

Spurs frenzy.

The Mersey River bursts apart

And a fledgling Task Force

Takes flight.

 

Red is the new black –

Fox is the new Thylacine.

 

The Red Plague sweeps our island.

Apocalypse looms.

 

All talk of tumours are drowned

In the sound of one hand

Back-slapping:

The Tassie Devil makes way

For the Tassie Hawks.

3.

I saw a fox down at Parliament House,

His slippery fingers foraging

Through the taxpayer’s purse.

 

Sheriff, won’t you lay a bait or two

For Robin Hood?

His men are far too merry.

 

 

Mosquitoes in Mesopotamia

The sun takes one last breath,

Disappears.

The moon sits alone;

A chalky coin

Upon a dusty-blackboard sky.

 

In the nervous silence of the night

Mosquitoes feed

On blistered skin.

 

Veins pulse with life;

A river of liquorice ink

Thunders beneath.

 

Needles drill,

A desert plain is spattered with blood.

 

Mosquitoes hum their farewell,

Each one

Full as a fat wallet.