Quetzals


from the ABC set Vintage Jack: Extracts and drafts from 'I'll Show You Tyrants'

Tomorrow we nest in rotting trees
crooning over fabulous electric millinery
like new age mayans or magpies

Tomorrow we hold out in a room in Canute House
round the corner from the husk of Poole Pottery,
applying mouths to one another
as if we were eating wild avocados,
imitating the corkscrew of snails
while flocks of business jetplanes named after myths
go hooting over the docks

and your father still casts bronze quetzals,
incandescent green with three foot tails
curving like liquorice, though the trade
is slimming since no one knows any more
what they are or what they might mean

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