Thursday, April 5, 2012

5. Mallard, the Gentleman's Game

Bird of bitter, sarcastic artistry.
I mean, the way he was drawn...

exploded Cubist snooker table almost.
Head upholstered in green, stapled
holy and high-class to a cleric’s collar;
pride of every single pond in England.

Then all the balls burst over his body!
Cue-brown, breast-red, yolk-yellow
struck along the beak, to tap black;
chalk-cube-blue if his wings splay out.

Me old Ducker, you had better
watch out where those are shot.

5 comments:

  1. I'm enjoying these commissioned bird poems. (Is this one of the commissioned poems?) Maybe it's rash to speak this early in the morning, I expect mallard as exploded snooker table to win some sort of prize for most creative metaphor of the day. The cleric's collar works too--they do have a slightly snooty look about them, don't they?

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  2. Hoo boy, I just got the joke in the title. Brain kicking into gear.

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  3. Hi! Thanks for the comments, yeah this is the second commissioned poem; sorry, I forgot to mention that. I'm glad you appreciated the metaphor and the punnery. I couldn't avoid it and for some reason had trouble writing about a Mallard duck any other way. Chances are it'll appear in a very different version eventually, as I've already started tweaking, but the important stuff will stay (that central metaphor, the puns etc.). Thanks again.

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  4. like the play on Me old Ducker, heh. but the dog - where's the retreiver? gotta work that in, keep wanting to see teeth...

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  5. Aren't the teeth in there already? Heh. Never looked at a Mallard that way before and not sure I will look at one the same way again.

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