Eating from the dictionary
Plucked chook we called Poultry, or Fowl,a meat rare in our kitchens, crepe-skinnedfor festivity or medicine.
As Chooks alive, they were placiddonors of eggs and mild music.Perches and dark gave them sleep.
Then came the false immigrationof millions crying in tin hell-shipswarmed all night by shit-haloed bulbs,
the coarsest species, re-named Chicken,were fresh meat for mouths too long corned.Valleys south of ours deigned to farm them.
When our few silver-pencilled Wyandotteswent down with a mystery plague,their heads trailing back on their wings
no vet could diagnose them.Chickens don't live long enoughto get sick, laughed battery keepers.
Much later, when all our birds were deada boy of eleven who keptname breeds said they had suffered
spinal worm. And was there a cure?Sure. Garlic in their drinking water.He named a small ration per year.
His parents vouched for him. No need.We'd seen his small flock, and the trustthat tottered round him on zinc feet.
All of half wayi.m. Sue Ridley
As I was going to Colerainea man in Bewleys said to meI wouldn't wear that green cap up thereif I was you, and I snatched it off —
colours aren't yet mortal in Australia.It was only our equestrian team capthat you had given me, but I tookthe warning, folded, to Coleraine.
There I found hospitalityand Bushmills and the Giant's Causeway.No bush near the Millsbut a coracle sea and the Giant's columns
massing on out, a basalt grandstandof rain-cup pillars, crimped like Rubiksfrom cooling out of their rock floorall of half way from America.
O.K. primavera lips
The coral tree growsin cowyards and old sties.Thorny, tan in winterit bears scarlet bracts,red lipstick crescents.
Of Earth's most spoken word,okay, just one suggested origindoesn't sound far-fetched:Only Kissing. From saucy times.Only kissing, Pa, O.K.?
In fertile soilcoral trees pout lipsout of their twigs, before greening.Ours didn't, until drugged withsuperphosphate. Now it gripsitself with carmine nails
to the height of wisteriathat cascades rain-mauvedown wonga vines and gum treesand the Chinese tallowsticketed with new green.
Diabetica
A man coughs like a boxand turns on yellow lightto follow his bladder
out over the gunwaleof his bed. He yawns uprighttrying not to dot the floor
with little advance pees.The clock on the night-standbiting off an hour he hates.
Sugar, the sick caterermanaged with unzipping needles.Blood syrop, shortener of legs,
ichor of the bishopwhose name is on a