Latest book of poetry: Tom & the Thumbscrews

Zoona Sticky

Another delightful but bewildering contemporary poem

Sighting of the killer/dead cow as she was shampooing her hair. It can happen. It just did. (Artwork by Jakob Zaaiman.)

I like to believe I’m alert to
sarcasm, but sometimes people
say things that pass me by. I remember
a lawyer/avant garde (read that
as ‘stroke’) musician being
asked in an interview what he would
like to see more of in an extremely
well-known worldwide magazine and
he answered ‘Photos of heads
on sticks!’. It was a good couple
of years before I realised
he was joking.

And the truth is
if I don’t clean the bath every
few days with Vim, or with a Vim-like
scouring substance, big brown patches
start to appear around and about
the sides of the bath, including at the back
and under the taps, and then
the whole tub starts
to look exactly like
a dead cow.