Some Cannot Be Caught

The Emma Press Book of Beasts

Emma Dai'an Wright, Liane Strauss, Anja Konig

• Publisher: The Emma Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781910139875
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

The Emma Press Book of Beasts rustles and roars with the voices of animals and humans, co-existing on Earth with varying degrees of harmony. A scorpion appears in a shower; a deer jumps in front of a car. A swarm of snowfleas seethes through leaf litter; children bait a gorilla at the zoo. The poems in this anthology examine hierarchy, herds, power, and the price we pay for belonging.

PART 1
The Alligator Owns The Pool

MEL PRYOR

Gorilla

You could sense expectation, the kids at the cage

after the whole King Kong experience,

a pecs-bashing, jungle titan performance

from the attraction, sprawled across the floor

like a discarded coat. A crowd of boys

plopped mints like mothballs through the bars, to lure

a look, a rise; the body lumbering,

on hands and knees it seemed, to centre stage,

the beaten stance and cowed, obedient eyes

still holding their magnificence. I thought

I’d found a new dawn of Darwin, I thought

I’d found the origin of suffering,

would’ve put my cheek against his long malaise,

said brother, forefather, I know what this is.

ANONYMOUS

I Had a Brindled Cow

I had a brindled cow,

Sheltered in the byre.

What became of the brindled cow?

I traded her for money.

What became of the money?

The river swept it away.

What became of the river?

Black bulls lapped it up.

What became of the black bulls?

They vanished down a long road.

What became of the long road?

It was overgrown by madder.

What became of the madder?

Young girls picked the flowers.

What became of the girls?

They rode away with young men.

What became of the young men?

They lived in manors beyond the hills.

What became of the manors?

They all went up in blue flames,

They dwindled down to ashes.

What became of the pile of ashes?

A black hen raked it away.

What became of the black hen?

A hawk carried her off.

What became of the hawk?

He vanished over green groves.

What became of the green groves?

The sons of God felled the trees.

What became of the sons of God?

They climbed up into the sky,

Strumming strings, drumming drums.

What are they doing in the sky?

They sit behind a table writing –

Who shall die, who shall live,

On this earth beneath the sun.

TRANSLATED FROM LATVIAN
BY BITITE VINKLERS

‘I Had a Brindled Cow’ belongs to the traditional Latvian folk songs known as the dainas, handed down orally from generation to generation. Collected primarily in the late nineteenth century and numbering over 30,000 texts, they are included in the UNESCO Memory of the World Register. The poem is probably a winter solstice song, when predictions were made about life and death in the coming year.

VICTORIA BRIGGS

The Flood Committee

The cat is hosting secret salons

with the songbird. Peace talks

beneath the hawthorn bush

in a language neither mew nor purr

nor the siren-savage warble he

saves for others of his kind.

He chatters now in sweet vibrato,

a pidgin trill the songbird looks as if she

understands, at least one note in every three.

Cat’s paws are pom-poms, the claws retracted

his arms laid down on forest floor.

Soon the dog will come to join them and

after that, the sheep, the horse. A flood committee,

who read the signs and own the blueprints

and resolve, this time, to keep

us out the Ark.

MAGGIE DIETZ

Late spring

In a bath with baking soda the boy pondered

the vanished bird: spindly wings netted with veins,

tufts of fuzz at the wattled throat, the skin there

pink and feathered as an old man’s neck

or hand. Black eyes visible through skeins

of lids. The soft pink belly like a clam.

Later he’d dream of swimming in air without

a float or...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Other Titles from the Emma Press
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Editors' Introduction
• Contents
• PART 1: The Alligator Owns The Pool
• PART 2: The Whole King Kong Experience
• PART 3: Fins That Could Be Wings
• Acknowledgements
• About the Editors
• About the Authors
• About the Emma Press