Poem: A further squalid thing
January 16, 2026
The spaces between dog’s toes
are gardens of smell
erupting fungus tickles the nose
with a soupçon of shit.
She stores a safe of comfort there
and sniffs the spaces
to remind her of the day, the week,
perhaps the fragrant year.
Her brain is a sommelier’s,
sensing the slightest hint of dead bird,
the one at the street corner,
and comparing it with the cockatoo
whose carcass she pranced through the park.
The mixture of these avian scents
must be a kind of heaven, a menu
of brown and must, tucked between
those neat non-books of toe.
The title refers to Sei Shōnagon The Pillow Book, the section called Squalid Things. Poem first published Womens Ink!, November 2024
Poem: Components (via link)
November 11, 2025
If you go to this link, you’ll find a poem I just had published at the venerable AntipodeanSF, called “Components”. It involves a horse and cart, which allows me to use that wonderful illustration by Phiz, of a scene from Dickens’s David Copperfield.
The poem is about routine and magic, and is rather long, by my standards. But by no means Dickensian.
Poem: The Smell of Heaven
October 16, 2025
To a truck driver
Nullabored,
it may be McDonald’s
The dog combines
bone with noseshadow
of absent master
The writer mixes
new printed book wisp
and any wine
Christ died scented
with sweat and piss
and others’ spit
Only a dead-brave poet
would mention roses
but yes, heaven
will be those too,
and we will turn thrice
and smell that which
we smelt in the womb —
warm blood and love.
As that dog, replete
with his master’s tang,
knows meat and bliss
were always one.
PS Cottier
An old poem, this one, first published in Eureka Street ten years ago.
Our sense of smell is so weak, compared to that of the creature in the photo, but I think it’s an important sense to explore in poetry.
Tuesday poem: Deep sea vents
September 16, 2025
Deep sea vents
Starfish cluster like orange suns,
clinging to the bewitching vent
whose toxic warmth allows them life.
Ghost-fish haunt these black depths,
blind, or carrying lanterns made
from their own anaemic flesh.
They flash like deep sea paparazzi.
Aliens live far beneath our boats
without a breath of solar light.
Planets of giant long-legged crabs,
and copycat worms in tubes near
long boiling steaming lava chimneys.
Smoking is definitely
good for their health.
PS Cottier
Alphonse de Neuville, illustration to Vingt mille lieues sous les mers
Tuesday poem: Snip (contains a very violent kangaroo)
June 10, 2025
Snip
Red earth drumbeat —
crimson kangaroo.
She cuts fingers,
her claws scimitar sharp.
Her pouch is packed tight
with pointy digits,
a pencil case dripping
more red on red ground.
Snip knows what’s up,
and how to remove it.
Put down that gum-leaf.
Turn around. Run.
Or better still,
sever your own finger
(left pinkie will do).
Hold it to your lips,
as if to blow. Blow.
The sound is audible
to Snippy alone.
She will come, avid.
Good girl Snip!
Present your offering.
She’ll slip it in that
bulging, fetid pouch —
mock pregnancy of phalanges.
You are now her friend.
She’ll leave you
with the other nine fingers
which is way better than none.
I just pray
that you’re not wearing thongs.
PS Cottier
Note: ‘thongs’ refers to the footwear that many non-Australians call flip-flops.
‘Snip’ published Midnight Echo 16, ed Tim Hawken, November 2021.
PS Cottier 