Taxidermy

By Fran Lock

(For M)

The poem waits to write you.
The clock counts out his spinal while
and the headboard bears weight
like an atlas bone.

I am stitching
the unlucky-for-some
of peacock feathers
to a morsel of mink skull,
backed by black lacquer.

My mortician’s catechism tells me
a dead boy is precious,
as rare and white as a coyote’s tooth;

tells me you ought to be mounted
on best blue velvet,
neo-Victorian Gothic surround.

But it isn’t true.
Although you do
lie amongst the accessories of vertebrae,
abdomen as shallow
as a sparrow’s narrow eye-socket.

It isn’t true.
The witching fingers
won’t make you graceful, articulate, bright.

[And this from a girl who own muertos!
All the colours of old-fashioned globes.]

Dead things are titivated pretty, yes.
But you are mortal.

I sit surrounded
by the bobbins of raccoon spine-
the nubbins of toe-bone,

the plethora shingle of vermin teeth.

And you are mortal.
Even the poem won’t dress you in lace
and stud your sad femurs
with imitation crystal.

 

About Frank Lock