"I can't stop comparing things to birds" and "Spider-horses", by DS Maolalai
I can’t stop comparing things to birds
I will still write you poems
when my mind’s gone
to absolute
plastic bag hamburger
meat. I’m sure you’ll
be sick of them. I think
you might already be. in paris
ten years ago
my skull struck a jazz drum
drunk on the montmartre stairwell.
so what if my mind
has arrived at delayed
fall apart? chrysty: I can’t
stop comparing things to birds.
even blowjobs are soft
as a sparrow. you are a bird:
I’m a summer you’ve migrated
over. I don’t think I’d blame you
to fly away now
before I get worse
than I am. I hope that you don’t
but I will understand. and it won’t
stop the poems
but will change them.
Spider Horses
you could be more or less
in clonakilty a lot of the time –
just endless green countryside
and scrub to horizons;
pieces of bush sticking
from shovel-dug ditches to all over
angles, like hairs from the head
of an overused toothbrush. then you turn
some corner and a giraffe
is unremarkable – reminding you
you’re somewhere else, like a rag
on the equator. it really is shocking
to see them, these wild spider-
horses, picking their way
over unirrigated grass
as if worried about turning an ankle.
a few times there were lions - they aren’t
so like housecats when you see them
from a window. our driver
shared locations by the radio
with other drivers. this was one of kenya’s
most visited national parks. buffalo
standing about as if they were waiting
for a horn to sound – men on corners
taking short breaks from roadwork.
vultures like anoraks on coathooks.
our photographer friend took photos
of everything – gazelles and leopards
and a couple white rhino. even the huts
like piles of playing cards
dealt clumsily on the sides
of the public highways, hanging
with second-hand trash. that made it
much less like clonakilty. the country
was full of scars and fresh air
and kids driving skinny cattle – they really
do it, and kept waving at our car.
another thing – more real than any lion
and it makes you feel disgusting
being rich enough to be there
and that you are somewhere else
and that other things are possible.
I waved back every time, feeling friendly
and one of them turned the wave
into a smooth middle finger
with such practice
you could hardly see the change.
that was best of anything.
who hasn’t been that kid?
DS Maolalai has been described by one editor as "a cosmopolitan poet" and another as "prolific, bordering on incontinent". His work has been nominated thirteen times for BOTN, ten for the Pushcart, and once for the Forward Prize, and released in three collections; "Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden" (Encircle Press, 2016), "Sad Havoc Among the Birds" (Turas Press, 2019) and “Noble Rot” (Turas Press, 2022)
Photography by Gui Moraes