Poem: The Angel of the North is pissed off
August 4, 2025
Stretching those flat brown wings
it regards the wattle, sings
its songs from Tyne and Wear
wonders how things are up there
and how it came to Canberra
in the wrong hemisphere, a
flight of seventeen thousand k.m.
and whether it’ll wing home again?
away from pesky cockatoos
and a sky too often unmarked blue
with insufficient sludge and rain,
and heat to fry a maquette’s brain.
It spits copper spit from unseen mouth.
Poor Angel! To be transported South.
PS Cottier
A bit of silliness for this week.
A maquette of the Angel of the North stands in the sculpture garden of the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. The poem is unseasonal, as it’s very cold in Canberra at the moment, much colder than where the big angel spreads its wings.
Photo by Picnicin. Creative Commons Zero, Public Domain Dedication
Poem: Before the Mustang
June 30, 2025
Before the Mustang
It was reliable, comfy as ug boots,
and just about that chic.
Grey, four cylinder, economical,
totally unAmerican.
Not a hint of speed or sprawl.
It was even easy to park,
and slid out of view
before anyone noticed it.
If you wanted to be a spy,
or a private eye, this car
would be the one for you.
You could dwell outside a house
for weeks, before anyone
thought that there was something to see,
something resembling a car.
I loved it, my first new car.
I hated it for its bland compliance
with a view of what should be.
It broke down exactly once,
and the police were hugely surprised.
It had a cavernous boot for shopping,
and no-one raced it from the lights,
making sport from nothing.
It is gone now, but I’m sure
someone is driving it, somewhere,
that grey slab of suburban metal,
that practical lump of sleep.
PS Cottier
Yes, I know that's not a Mustang! But I had to share a photo of this beautiful object spotted at my local shops.
The poem above appeared in the volume V8, written by myself and Sandra Renew, published in 2022 by Ginninderra Press.
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.
Four-legged loss
May 10, 2025
I work the dread so many times
that it’s a kind of sudoku in my head —
rehearsing death like an actor a play.
Hopefully one day she will just not get up,
lie too long in her habitual basket
and avoid that dreaded visit to the vet.
There, liquid death is delivered kindly,
but the syringe is always filled with guilt
alongside yellow pentobarbital.
How can a dog understand that love
might write a prescription for death?
She can’t. She licks my hand, trust
written in the ageing eyes, so cloudy.
Human minds flick through possibility,
feel the knot of loss before death.
But dogs just are. Until they’re not.
PS Cottier
This poem was published in last year’s Grieve anthology, a book made up of entries to a yearly competition organised by the Hunter Writers Centre. The dog who inspired the poem has just died, being put to sleep at home, so I thought I’d republish the poem here. Anyone who has a dog in their life dreads the moment that they die, and believes their dog to be the best in the world. Vale Mango, my much missed Staffie. Fifteen years, and not nearly enough.
Poem: Colonoscopy
April 26, 2025
Colonoscopy
Such things happen; such medieval things.
Bruegel could have dreamt this one,
a one-eyed snake wriggling through bowels,
controlled by a one-armed Satan.
Curl of guts projected onto screen,
their pink nest of privacy invaded,
in anxious search for polyp eggs
that could house flesh-eating crabs.
It's beyond spread-eagled, this photography,
so explicit; as far from erotic as it is possible to be.
Colon, opened book, tells its twisted tale,
from end to end to avid reading cyclops,
pushing through to final o! of surprise.
Unblinking auditor emerges into sweeter air,
that digital elephant's questing nose.
PS Cottier
PS Cottier 