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published
in Annual Open Poetry Competition anthology,
Peterloo Poets, 2007,
ISBN 978-1904324-39-3
Collector
She started small, a mouse head, sharp folds of
bone,
jaws
pincered in a snap. The structures gleamed
as
she polished them, arctic, rococo.
Soon
random finds were not enough — the badger gleaned
from
the forest, the long teethed snout of her dolphin
washed
up on the sand, a facsimile of some power tool —
so
she graduated to roadkill, cutting off heads, waiting.
She
found a snowy owl on the tarmac,
fanned
out like spilt milk, watched for months
as
the head shrank, the eyeballs collapsed
into
yellowing moon craters and the beak whittled down
to
a cipher. It was beautiful to see things becoming
the
essence of themselves, losing
their
padding, the frippery of fat and muscle.
No
more blues and pinks, maroons and browns,
just
the calcium-cold symmetry of white.
Now
she stares in the mirror.
Her
bones press against the pale drum of skin
like
the spines of an open umbrella. She is aspiring,
patient,
as she waits for her body to claim
this
spare perfection, for nature to finish its work.
Sue Rose
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