bucolic:
paddocks flooded with cochineal,
feral horses grinding
pinecones with their teeth.
a woodshack and, in the doorway,
a woman sitting with a television.
while watching Country Calendar
she whittles fruit into quadrupeds.
beyond,
a eucalypt stands through
all the commercial breaks
with his hands in his pockets.
mute
in the silent house he keeps
a mouthful of sparrows.
he swills detergents
to rinse them out,
inhales woodsmoke and
insecticide.
he has scrubbed his
tongue with a bottlebrush,
used cottonbuds and sponges.
the more he pushes
the deeper they roost.
nowadays, the dawn chorus
rattles from his ribs.
he holds the sky in his belly.
when he exhales, birds pour
over the neighbourhood,
quivering in chimneypots and
straddling tv aerials.
now and then he swallows
them back, as if by accident.
the softest matador
i am a watercolour, always.
my skin splits into the oleander bush.
my hair blends into a cloud.
i am pieces thrown to the bulls.
my hip bone, my ribs, bleed
into the bovine tongues.
i am the softest matador
you'll ever see, throwing my
pink rags into the wind.
bulls follow me like broken men.
i have pressed my banderilla into
their collars and been forgiven.
i am a watercolour, always
weeping in the bullring,
consoled only by beasts and
the empty clapping of castanets.
