Tall Tales Poem by Mark. A Heathcote

Tall tales have always interested me.

Like a grandfather's stories of catching his Sunday dinner,
a goose with floating bread on a fishing line,
reeling it in from the goddamn skies —
or catching blue tits in a baited rat trap to feed his gaunt ferrets,
or taking a long scraggy hawthorn branch to a rabbit hole
to snag a rabbit in its thorns.

My sister had platinum blonde hair;
she was said to be the milkman's daughter.

My father was a fumigator,
an exterminator by trade, local folks called him Peter the rat,
a man who'd blow smoke out of his ears, smelling of beer —
who tarred the window ledges to fix his daughters' pigeon complaints —
the screams, the screams, the goddamn screams
as the pigeons the next morning ripped themselves apart.
Who taught me to tell the time
because I couldn't, and he knew it,
but never invested a second of his own in me.

On his deathbed, he messaged me through a younger sibling:
Do you want to know your real father's name?
You're not my son.