I want to believe that the red crayfish claws
on the planks above the water
are not my mother’s stilettoes
thrown on the hotel floor by my father
in his impatience to ravish her,

that the hulking grey herons inside the hide,
caught by the camera trap at night,
are not her hallucinations hunting her.
Night after night, she made me sit
on the side of her bed while she told me

about men – how they gobble girls up
like herons with their spear beaks.
I don’t want to believe this, because
if men are bad then all there is
in the world is her. The swamp

is salted with tears, my eyes
swollen to slits as I peer out
from the hide of my face – a plain
hut from which, for the rest of my life
I’ll gaze out for one glimpse

of a glossy ibis. I don’t mind that he’ll
devour me, I just want to see his bridal plumage
shot with honeymoons and sunbeams –
that one time I went to a nightclub
and danced with him in the strobe light.

 

 

*
From Magma 91, In The Flesh 

 

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