The Irish Giant
I am an eagle stuffed in a jar,
trout under polythene, bubble mouth hooped
in a perfect O. Am a tiger rug-
flattened, an aubergine embryo, child
garotted in Irish peat, a boy Inca
sacrifice fossilled in vomit, a carcass
kippered in snow -
Shut up, shut
up! These thinkings are wild. It’s
daylight, the sum is a lattice through laboratory panes....
Check the specimen - yes, still quite intact, decolourized, fit
to be shown,
..... The Irish giant - eight feet tall in his skeleton toes!
Huge sums of money - huge as his frame - paid for his corpse....
and he about to be buried at sea!
....... A deathbed wish - ignored - but in the name
of research it had to be done, for the sake of some other poor
freak,
..... and all of his blubber was boiled away, like they did
on the field of battle, leaving only the bones!
AUTOPSY
of horror. You were not there. Oh I know
there’s levels of empathy and you’ve probably
heard of it all before and you’ve
got to get on with the planet - but think -
as you skip through the rooms one century a minute -
can’t the cleaning up job begin here?
Darkness, and sky is a sludging of purple scar
pain in an eel skin zipping, crab in a scalding high
plunge little screamer, a saw
trepanning -
Enough, enough! To the point -
I am tired of being so
flagrant an outline, dimensional X ray fenestrated
by eyes. I am heart - rain longing
for sea smell sinking, cool blue
drench around fish mouth soft juicing
Dissolution
in seaweed and stars.
Page(s) 119
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