Artwork: The Difference Between Then and Now by Will Jacques
Autonecrography
Harry Owen
My death is happening now:
no dust, hooves, feral sweat of wildebeest,
just a voyeuristic investigation of flies
inquisitive as kittens.
This tank is filled, emptied
and we are sticklebacks, fierce, red-bellied.
Look, children, see the quivering male,
observe his soft cloacal brain.
Someone nearby is calling:
platitudes smoke in vast starling surges
to the sky, shrieking of renditions,
beheadings, pointlessly.
See how my death keeps happening.
Be merciful: let me lapse into life.
(From the collection Five Books of Marriage, 2010)
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Poem for a Snake
Harry Owen
Beside the path just now I came upon
a little snake, dismembered by a bike.
Dead, of course, its mouth wide open as if
yelping out a squeal of caution, warning.
Luckless creature, its voice neither heard
nor heeded even here, so far from roads.
We fail to pay attention, don’t notice
brothers, sisters, where they live, cry out, and die.
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The Taste of Charcoal
Harry Owen
I don’t know you, hillside, but you
know me, your breath playing in my palm
as I sit here braced on a rock,
your familiar pitch of blackened limbs,
wood-ossuary kloof, bone boughs
piled high like antlers everywhere.
You’ve been through it, haven’t you?
We both have.
You’ve suffered the grief of burning
and will doubtless know it again,
for spark is both death and life.
So we wait. You stay. This rough ground
remains charred, seared, wounded, your coals
tasting of skaapsteker, buzzard, skink.
And of me.
