Belated non-Valentine’s Day haiku
February 20, 2026
Unwashed boxer shorts
unfurled flags on the table
once there were roses
***
They both loved the dog
long treat filled conversations
silence when he died
***
Nineteen-fifties films
lipstick stains on his collar
Rorschach of regrets
***
PS Cottier
These weird little ones came about after a saw details of a competition being run by a well known poetry journal for haiku about not being in love, or non-Valentines Day poems. They wanted haiku written in the slightly rigid 5/7/5 form. After writing three, I saw that the contest was for those who hadn’t had more than one book published, which ruled me out.
I’m glad I didn’t see that before writing this nasty triptych, which was a lot of fun. But, as they say in the classics, read the rules!
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: The paisley pitbull
December 11, 2024
Each bark is Mozart sweet. Silver flutes
are nothing to the improvised flow
of furry sax buried in soft-toffee bay.
His teeth are crochet hooks. Bites bloom
into perennial tattoos, scars in winter
flutter into hollyhocks come spring.
The cat and the kid eat from his bowl,
sip his milk and crunch his kibble,
and the robin plucks hairs for her nest.
He turns three times three before rest,
and apostrophic patterns erupt
as the canine chameleon settles.
Nightbulls may gore; Pamplonas
still run through his veins,
ghost-genes there in blood’s bottle.
But paisley outs. Stretching into dawn,
he shakes off hard history like dew,
and noses, bee-soft, into day.
PS Cottier
This is an old poem, which first appeared in my chapbook Quick bright things: Poems of fantasy and myth (Ginninderra Press, 2016). The dog in the picture was only six back then; now she’s nearer to fifteen.
The poem touches on myths about pitbulls, which can be as affectionate and gentle as any other breed of dog.
Tuesday poem: Sun hunger
November 11, 2024
Sucking in a sun a day,
my appetite is never sated.
My gut remains deeper and darker
than any Mariana Trench.
I stuff myself, gorge and cram,
but can never expel. Once in my jaws,
well, that’s it. Solar systems
are everyday entrées, mere moons
never elicit a burp. Creatures tiny,
creatures huge, on planets I eat,
I clench on them and chew.
I put the die in diet, the ease
in squeeze, but purest light
is my favourite meat.
I store a glowing disc of suns,
hot hors d’oeuvres or tapas,
awaiting my gourmand’s mouth.
Remember my sun-lust,
the tens of thousands of meals,
the gaping wolf of nevermore.
Enjoy the summer warmth,
the waves and sandy, beachy mirth.
Play that game of cricket.
But overs may be more limited
than players ever expected.
Any sudden burst of cold
may be my nugatory tongue,
about to end both grief and fun.
PS Cottier
Source: https://reporter.anu.edu.au/all-stories/monster-black-hole-devouring-one-sun-every-day
Recovering from two launches, I thought I’d post a new poem of a scientific sort, or at least one taking science as a jumping off point.
Tuesday poem: Fingernails
October 15, 2024
Fingernails
They never stop questing outwards, these epiphytic plants,
soilless roots tonguing the air. Mostly, we cut them into stubs,
mere bulbs awaiting final burial, asserting a sharp superiority.
Some men do allow them to snake their ways around and around,
until the hand becomes mere support for their rollercoaster ways.
Gone beyond decoration, the curling roundabout growths all indicate
each life's road and certain end. Some glue fake covers on each finger,
minute bright coffins jewelled with stones like Egyptian scarabs,
that once adorned the dead. But nails need never die. After host stops
they still grow, scraping coffins with cartilage, tusks of ivory feeling
for dirt long denied. Some are fed finally on fire, and burn with sticks
and hair and skin, external teeth closing on the jerking meal of flame.
A few succeed, reach dark earth, and plant themselves, and grow to men,
who carry new nails on clever, thumb-opposed fleshy tools,
deaf to the breathless emergent growth that tips each handy finger.
It crawls out, from the fecund pinkness, unstoppable; the quick tipped
living pointer, small flat shelled snail, that whispers of unseen bones,
and death that never dies, but clasps us tight as skull holds mind.
PS Cottier
Last weekend I was part of a poetry roundtable as Conflux, a science fiction convention here in Canberra, and read this freaky poem which has obvious horror tropes. Delighted to find this illustration by JA Knapp at the wonderful Old Book Illustrations to go with it! I particularly like the mushrooms growing in the distance. I wouldn’t be eating them any time soon…
‘Fingernails’ first published in Chiaroscuro: Treatments of Light and Shade in Words (ChiZine), Canada, Volume 47, Week 2, April-June 2011.
PS Cottier 