Menagerie

Cheryl Pearson, Amy Louise Evans

• Publisher: The Emma Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781912915385
• eBook ISBN: 9781912915392
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Poetry
• Index: Literature

Menagerie is a collection of poems about animals, divided into three sections: water, earth and air. Some poems examine a creature from close-up, almost allowing the reader to see the world through the animal's eyes, while the poet is more present in other poems, looking on. The collection invites the reader to reflect on loneliness, love, mortality, and hope. Each poem is typeset with plenty of space around it, allowing it to breathe. With stylised illustrations by Amy Evans.
from "Octopus Tank, Torbay Aquarium"
I saw a ribbon of starlings once – they rose
and fell in that same way, tied and re-tied Rome
in a bow, and I thought the knot at their centre
must be God. Here is God again in this stranger,
the colour coursing her billow and flop like a weather map
crawling with storms.

Peacock, Castle Howard

After the coast, this. Miles of brown

and rain. A two hour tickertape of trees.

The sun dazzles the wet. In the road’s wells.

On the brown leaves. The only bold the blue

numbers restless in the fields, lambs sprayed

with a claim. We pull in for the castle shop,

thinking local venison, thinking cheese. Unkink

our backs in the car park, squint in the bright.

It’s the high cry that prompts us to look – here!

here! All the world’s colour on the rampart wall,

every fruit and jewel condensed. This is where

the summer went: blue sky, green grass, gold

flower to butter a throat. Lovelier for the park deer

and their brown crowns. Lovelier for the moat

of mud and moss. All cries and trailing silks,

like a killed queen mourning her head. See how

we stop for beauty. Stand in the mushroomy damp

and gape. On another planet, a football’s kicked.

A chimney smokes. A pike tickles the face of a lake.

Magpie

Cock of the walk, of the square swept just for him

of studs of gum and plastic wrap.

This here’s the city’s kingpin. See how he struts,

dapper as Capone in his suit and spats.

Imagine a gun slung underwing, and cigarettes.

Moonshine in a monogrammed flask.

He keeps each gleam and glittering thing. A tax:

foil packets, ear-less pearls with silver backs,

and the double score of shining lid

and cream filched from the newsagent’s mat.

And there his club of mobsters, glossy-tuxed,

rattling the statues with their gunfire chat.

I’ve seen them flatten pigeons in a mood.

I’ve seen them swagger, cocky, by the cat

who sleeps outside on the chip-shop bins,

dreaming of cod and feathered things

rounding out his old bones to fat. Then: Scat!

A toddler runs, all whoops and waving arms a-flap,

and the magpies lift in a sheet of black. For a moment,

the whole sky is dark as pitch, and then

they tack away. And the square is suddenly light, and plain,

like a storm has broken, done with its old havoc.

Flamingo

As though the gas was left on high, and a match

struck. And now the pale flames are licking at the glass

with long tongues of rosy light. Or else the yolk

of sunrise broke, and washed each bird in its blush,

the way red wine defies salt and sponge.

Some are soft; white lace held against a girl’s ch...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Contents
• Title Page
• WATER
• EARTH
• AIR
• Acknowledgements
• About the Author