Tuesday poem: Where they go
December 8, 2021
Where they go Full calls have no place among the clipped hedges, the solid garages, or mere carports of suburbia. There is indeed a farm where plucky roosters go, invisible to the eyes of those who dispatched them with handy axe, or squeamish vet. In the sky the boy-chooks crow, show their bright red crowns, scratch the earth. Executed for the lack of eggs, they hatch sweet cockadoodle-doos to the moon. The stars catch gleams of manic eye, the triumphant shake of crimson wattle. PS Cottier
That’s a simple poem that was recently short-listed for a competition. (There are monthly competitions run by the publication Positive Words, for tiny stories and short poems.) I find it amazing how many people keep chooks but don’t think too much about the lack of male birds, all dispatched because they don’t meet our supposed needs. I’ll shut up now before I go the full vegan, and get back to perusing the 300 or so poems submitted for The Canberra Times.
Tuesday poem: Backyard farms
January 10, 2017
Backyard farms
Corrugations echo with cluck,
the occasional illicit crow,
ear-pecked neighbours pick fights;
shrill voices make 6 a.m. alarms.
Frosted into internal mush,
harder shell of fallen white,
strawberries mimic the avid snails
munching them like Frenchmen.
Orange peel, meat and coffee
strewn on sacred stewing mounds
create decomposition. Disbelief
that she knows so little, cares less.
PS Cottier
Must find accent key…
An old poem this one, and I don’t think it’s been published anywhere before.
In Canberra the bigger backyards tend to be in the innermost suburbs, although many old houses on big blocks are being demolished for units. So many a chicken scratches within a few kilometres of Parliament House. (Insert manure joke at will.)
Happy new year, by the way.
PS Cottier 