Pascale Petit Biography

From The Treekeper's Tale
This giant atlas moth's broad wings
could be the map of China.
...

From The Zoo Father
To visit you Father, I wear a mask of fire ants.
When I sit waiting for you to explain
...

From The Huntress
It's time to go up to your front door, Mother,
and ring the rattling buzzer of a bell,
the door with two curved fangs.
...

After Les Murray


Inside the sandpit you are playing for your life. Your
bucket and spade that smiled all day long, like family
in your satchel, now work hard. Your material is sand. It weaves
a universe where you are huge, the cellar behind you,
eclipsed by twelve chestnut trees and their pigeon gods. On
and on you burrow, into your sanctuary, devotion's
priest. There are rituals to do, like counting leaves on the sky's loom.
Any lapse and you tumble back into the brain's forks, rick-racking
the minutes for the lock that unclicks, the coffining dark, the
hooded stranger with Papa's voice, the makeshift bed.
...

Behind the Fauverie a crawl of quayside traffic
while Aramis roars for his food, the air
turbulent as he opens his jaws in a huge
yawn. If I hold my breath, half-close my eyes
and listen hard — there at the tongue's root,
in the voicebox of night, I might hear
the almost-vanished. He's summoning his prey,
this lord of thunderbolts, calling to ghosts
of the Lost World, with this evening chant
to scarlet macaw, tapir, golden lion tamarin.
Until everything goes slow and the rush-hour
queue of scale-to-scale cars is one giant caiman
basking on the bank. The jaguar's all
swimming stealth now — no sound — a stalker
camouflaged by floating hyacinths, senses
tuned only to the reptile of the road. Then, with
one bound, spray scatters like glass, as Aramis
lands on the brute's back and bites its neck.
...