The Story In The Corner Poem by Sheena Blackhall

There's a story in the corner of my family
It's a real sob story, a beaut, with all the trimmings.
Get out your hankies. There's going to be boo-hooing
It's wooing your pity.

Sympathy makes it purr.
Now, it repeats like onions, like a stuck record.

It's dead of course, dead as a tailor's dummy
But I love to take it for outings...It does so love its outings....
Wearing its best coat.
Though its glass eye frightens the relatives to fits.

If it went too long unsaid, I'd have to admit it was dead
And so, though the spider is building a nest in its grizzled hair
I'm letting it stay in the corner.

Did you notice the albatross wings I wear round my neck?
It flew in from an ancient rhyme.
What's this story, you're wondering,
And what's it got to do with a mouldy albatross?
Didn't I tell you? Once upon a time …