Saturday, 15 August 2015











The Entertainers

We found a clown in the woods
and brought him home.
Now he lives in our chicken coop.
We give him corn to peck.

At first we encouraged him
to lay us some eggs,
but all he’d yield
were brittle little jokes
that crumbled
as they left his lips.

We let him out
from time to time
and he helps us in the garden,
watering the plants
from the plastic sunflower on his lapel,
which appears to never run dry.

At night we hear him trying to lift
the spirits of the poet
we keep hog-tied in the pigpen,
dancing on his hands,
smacking himself in the face with a spade,
mock-bawling like a babe…

But it’s a hopeless task –
the poet’s been dismal
ever since we fished him 
out of that filthy old river.

One day we’re hoping
to get a real pig
and some genuine,
egg-laying chickens.

Then we’ll take the clown
and the poet
back where we found them
and they’ll have to fend
for themselves.















This poem was first published by New Welsh Review 

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