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Poetry Library Southbank Centre - The Poetry Library housing the Arts Council Collection at Southbank Centre

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Frances Nagle

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The Bug Hunt

He would have relished this: his mother
kitted-out for the job
in safari suit and solar topi,
invisible under nets and boxes,
shotgun for extreme emergency only.

So far two sightings, both by your sister.
One in the bathroom
from where she screamed and
my heart dropped fathoms;
the other from my bed where she lay sprawled
glued to the phone; she screamed again.

So no clues there, but we know, don't we
that in that laboratory we call your bedroom
strange cultures grow.

As unlike a council tip as it gets now,
for you are at college with much of your clothing
and most of the props that make you feel like you -
CD player, guitar, Loaded archive;
although you've only gone back on the thinnest premise
that you will pass your last of last last chances,
this exam. If you don't
you'll be back next week and the killer bugs
will emerge in a monstrous phalanx and take us over.

Dustpan and brush in hand I am going in
and will carry them alive to somewhere safe,
in the spirit of the boy who used to live here,
the naturalist, whose most beloved possession
The SAS Survival Handbook
lies somewhere underneath this mess.

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