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
Tuesday poem: This poem is a birdbath
January 18, 2016
This poem is a birdbath
and it fills itself with bird,
the quick splash of silvereye
the suspicious sip of currawong,
unable to believe in non-carnivorous gift —
looking out for bigger beaks behind the bush.
This poem features no sudden cat, lurking,
a sonnet’s volta, waiting to rewrite the tone
from mild celebration to whiskered doom.
The water slops over the rim of
the poem.
The mess feeds the grass below, as do the birds.
Birds draw no firm distinctions between bath
and toilet. They revel, quietly, and the poem
expresses gratitude, for being, for being merely.
P.S. Cottier
Muse with beak
That one doesn’t really need much exegesis! Annoyingly, a wee glitch (as opposed to an enormous GLITCH) is preventing me doing a broken line…’the poem’ is supposed to appear under the rest of the line. But I’ll try and stay positive rather than cursing my computer or the platform which allows for these posts!
See which Tuesday Poets are still posting poems by checking out the sidebar here: http://tuesdaypoem.blogspot.com.au
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In other poetry doings, Michele Seminara has recently had four poems featured at Rochford Street Review, and it was a delight to find that one was dedicated to a certain P.S. Cottier. Michele’s first book, Engraft, in which these poems appear, will soon be launched in Sydney, Wagga Wagga and Melbourne. You can read the poems here, and also find details of the launches there. I am thinking of going to Wagga.
Apart from being a fine poet and editor, Michele is also a blogger.
PS Cottier 