Title: Island

Author: Tom Weston

In: Sport 33: Spring 2005

Publication details: Fergus Barrowman, 2005

Part of: Sport

Keywords: Verse Literature

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Sport 33: Spring 2005

Island

page 158

Island

Yes, they could jump, the
mice in Palermo, rooftop to rooftop,
recalling an earlier dream

of flying. They were in a hurry,
each one of them, getting
fat and bombing pedestrians,

departing balustrades
without preparation.
Gravity sang a powerful song.

The Mouse Queen
called them down, eighty-
three she was, and the mice

found her persuasive.
The new generation did not think.
Eating and plummeting, that was it.

But she hated mice.
They drank from her closed eyes,
running free on her body,

a mouse park, egging her on.
She fed them,
and she called them down.

I am the Mouse Queen and I
hate their slim bodies,
the way they think the sky

page 159

is a road and one tower
as good as the next, spinning
stories like trapeze wire.