Title: Sport 29

Publication details: Fergus Barrowman, October 2002

Part of: Sport

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Sport 29: Spring 2002

Mary-Jane Duffy

page 170

Mary-Jane Duffy

Waiting for Buller
(after Bill Hammond)

i.
Out of the green they filled the room
to the privet hedge, the haha

crushing the hellebore, crowding the car
—everywhere birds were waiting.

ii.
Over weeks they lolled arguing about tattoos
taxidermy and gold medallions

passing Lucky Strikes by the pool table.
Those airheads could squawk.

iii.
Furious, you brushed up the harrowed
canvases of the Canterbury plains

shaggy parched tussocks
trees crisped by nor'westers.

iv.
Later perched on the hill of the ladder
you woke to find yourself alone.

The empty canvases now full, you are
surrounded in colonies of melancholy.

page 171

How to Draw Horses
(after Sam Savitt)

All his life he'd been fascinated
by horses. Wherever possible

he'd imitated their actions.
For days he was a workhorse.

Holding a rope in his mouth
he pulled the neighbours' kids

in a cart. He allowed himself
to be tied up. For ages he would

stand in a corner shifting
from one leg to the other.

At dinner once he lowered
his head into a bowl of soup

and slurped it up the way
a horse would.