axolotl

in my melancholy baggage
there’s a dead dog   a dead dad

a dead friend or two
a first love gone to fat

too many feuds a la cab sav
silver dance shoes

with a broken buckle
a black velvet dress for a boy

who danced a sore throat away
mum with a tongue           sharp as a paper cut

a cream plastic lamb on a xmas tree
one stillborn burning at my uncle’s farm

the dead tabby on the way home from school
ringed with stones and cringing petals

and the walking fish outside the Bio Lab
speared by Cousins with his compass

stopped in its placid tracks
minding its own business

Finalist in Goodreads poem of the month January 2013

First appeared in Windmills, 2011