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 

Joseph Cornell’s Untitled (Great Horned Owl with Harvest Moon)

The owl who wears the moon like a halo

considers himself saintly, and indeed,

compared with many he’s an upstanding fellow,

if something of a voyeur. Not the seedy

kind, you understand – he merely savours

the healthy stare; likes to know what folk

get up to when we think we’re under cover,

blind to the bird on the branch, eyes like egg yolks.

‘When not glutting your relish for scandal,’ he exclaims,

‘you’re drunk on, and drowning in, a tidal wave of farce.’

‘True,’ I reply, ‘there’s plenty to make us ashamed,

but virtue’s a cinch when you’re stuck behind glass.’

He says nothing to this, though his halo glows brighter

and his toes grip the perch just a little bit tighter.

Art by Joseph Cornell

Poem by Benjamin Palmer

This poem was first published in the New Welsh Review