Sheena Blackhall Poems

1. Marilyn Munro's Fur

It swung from her back like a promise -
Presidents, gangsters, hunted it in packs;
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Four inches up the bath the water sits
Three towels laid out,
One on the floor in case her feet should slip.
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Every two-bit shyster wanting to take pot-shots at my city
Quotes this headline:
Titanic Sinks. Aberdeen Man is Drowned
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The citadels of sand rise up
Magnificent and grand:
And every step of crystal glass
Towers up above the years of grass
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Tho I've never met it, I know that Heaney's pen
Is whimsical. It's got a mind of its own,
One of those lyrical trap door minds
You walk across, and Poof you're in the basement.
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Hedgehog, the mouse-eared prickle-back breaks cover
His ploughshare nose sheers through the silky grass
His hog-snout scoops up nosegays of the wood
Mould, moistness, mushrooms, drops of moon-made dew.
...

In the middle of the night
Hear the fretful feet of vole
Fox has put a crimson sash
In the velvet side of mole.
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The bus stalled at a pot-hole
I watched through the steamed-up window
An old woman pause to squat.
Lifting her colourful sari
...

If you see a jumbo flying over Sumnavoe
Don't treat him like a leper or an alien UFO.
Please don't write letters to the Times, or text an air controller
If, high above Auld Reekie's roofs, he lights up a Corolla.
...

Moon snags on branches,
Stars are snow seeds
Blown across the black-bull hide of night;
Earth catches paw-prints
...