A tiger doesn't change its stripes
Thylacinus cynocephalus was a mouthful,
too difficult to articulate, better to imagine
its wolf-dog-head contemplating
the tender hides of colonists'
sheep and a gun-barrel.
Better to mount its robust tail
erect and purposeful, a mouth full
of poultry and to consider its still,
taxidermied potential.
Small marsupials float, suspended
in alcohol and glass.
Curiosities drifting,
awash with human intent.
Contained
Here, in my hand,
near the mount of Venus,
I'm keeping the small things in my life.
Orange grains of sand
I've stolen from the sandblow,
a speckle backed cowry
grinning its bar of gritted teeth,
a silvered scar to mark night's drunken fall.
A gecko scuttles up the yellow wall
to hide behind the yellow
dress print of Kahlo
and her winged eyebrow.
A monkey holds forth to a parrot.
Frida looks out
as the gecko begins to sing.
Understand, as I open my palm
of trinkets, that this is all
I need to hold.
Gold mountain
Strange to find beauty in this place. At this time.
On a night drive to Rockhampton to see a trio
of plays about mining, and Luke Howard (a lucky find)
playing New Gold Mountain on the radio, turned up loud.
And this is gold country too; or it was.
The abattoir to the left funnels steam into the night,
a long slow drag exhaled by a thousand beasts,
also travelling tonight. Poor cattle, horses, and pigs.
Some days, the air is so bloodthick it hinges
at the back of the throat, a glottal of rusty muck.
Not tonight though. The air is winter clear, glassy.
Tonight the abattoir sits atop its small hill festooned
with industrial ribbons of light. Orwell might have
named it the 'Ministry of Freedom', its chrome pipes
and turrets silvered by the moon, a grounded star —
its orbit of sportsground light celebrating
some kind of industrial momentum, a night time
broadcast announcing clean, bright, efficient death.
Tanning
Barlow's Hill, Central Queensland
Stripping black wattle bark
for tannic acid, they've piled the cart high —
a mountain of bark for tanning pelts.
Saturday afternoons spent in the back
of the shop perusing snakeskins,
kangaroo and possum pelts from trappers
as tanned leather or green hides. Afternoons
holding up the shapes and shades of animal
furs and skins, puzzling the contours of new
boots, laces, belts and bags. Quietly imagining
the vivid lives of creatures walking
these scrubby hills. Land bought off the back
of possum skins, tanned with: alum,
salt, wattle bark or tea.
Kristin Hannaford is a Queensland based poet. Her writing has appeared in Cordite, Australian Poetry Journal, Overland, Filling Station and Trace, a chapbook of commissioned poems exploring histories of Rockhampton. She was awarded an Australia Council for the Arts Literature Board New Work grant to develop a new collection of poems in 2013.