Three Poems at Bat Bean Beam

For better or for worst, I am catching up on my literary commitments.

This is in part enabled by the exhaustion of work and pregnancy, which means I am not tonight attending this event.

This, I should admit, is just one more thing in my list of good problems to have.

Pain Relief (in response to this post)

There was a classroom poster of all
the birds and their names,
mostly in English. The most
dangerous birds (to you) at the

top, the least were at the bottom.

I read it to avoid the other
readings (water safety,
fire safety, burning children and
drowning girls) and read it again.

I watched the wall and read it again.

Hot August night, under covers in
someone else’s room, someone else’s town
I could hear the sound of my own groaning.
After a while the birds came into focus:

beak, wings, breast, bearers of pain.

This is the New Zealand Falcon
and behind it, this, this is the Kakapo.
Sharp motion followed by dull ache.
The adults at the door in the dark.

I don’t remember what happened after that

to me or to the pain; it must have stopped.
We were miles from the city hospital.
The beating of the wings,
the scuffling of the claws.

I was ashamed of the metaphor

and of the pain. (Fire, water, learn.)
The birds retreated to the wall,
the poster superseded.
The lesson never got repeated.

School (in response to this post)

The playing surface is on fire,
the writing surface, under water.
The buildings raise a mountainside,
the bodies cowering as they died.

The angry kids assemble here
for snacks and quiet in lieu of play.
The future migrants walk the coast
for rusting hulks to use as boats.

The Phoenicians (in response to this post)

When Dido fell upon her sword
Anna took up historiography.
The burning waterfront was her idea:
a lie for cowardly lovers to read.

What the smoke and flames obscured
was a princess with her architects.
There wasn’t much time for what she planned:
the whole damn city underground.