A passing fancy, A fine catch, Archaeozoology & The girl with the impossibly long tongue
by Lara Frankena
[ poetry - january 06 ]
A passing fancy
At first he delighted in the pitter patter of her metrical feet.
He would read her aloud at odd times of day,
try her out in the shower against the tiles
or finger her through his pocket as he waited for the bus.
He was careful not to crease her as he laid her on the bed
and always kept his coffee mugs safely out of reach.
Soon, however, he found her a bit showy,
her line lengths too short, her manners abrupt.
Oh, she suffered in translation.
He wished he'd never heard her in German,
never introduced her to the French.
She last tumbled through his door in Spanish,
flaunting her ñ's and accent graves,
with that insipid Castilian lisp.
A fine catch
He likes the natural look;
prefers you without makeup.
He's a successful businessman who turns
to taxidermy in the evenings to unwind.
He started somewhat accidentally
with your favourite pet, but became hooked,
and now you can't share a freezer with him.
A visitor might drift to the garage for ice
and find his collection in their plastic shrouds.
The fish are innocuous enough, but the tufts
of brown fur, or hair, crosshatching a frosty bag -
what would a neighbour's wife think of the handsaws,
the bone fragments? His favourite pose,
the way he will always remember you:
reading, staring fixedly at the book balanced
in your hands, your enlarged pupils glassy
in the dim light of the bedside lamp.
Archaeozoology
My excitement for the day?
Besides the dust, the heat:
the fossilized teeth of some
ancestral shrew or water vole,
tiny incisors uncovered
as I sat tracing my brush
across prehistoric muck.
Then my delighted professor
doffed his hat and christened
the dead thing after himself.
The girl with the impossibly long tongue
She could lick all the ice cream from the depths of a cone
and slick back stray hairs without lifting a finger.
She used it to point or turn pages as she read.
When she slept in the car
it hung from her mouth, pink and gleaming.
Her brother would stroke it with the sole of his shoe
and she would retaliate with a wet slap.
She'd heard of kids stuck to frozen poles,
but couldn't resist touching one
with the tip of her tongue,
and no one blamed her parents
for allowing the medics to sever it
so close to her lips.
