Title: Sport 36

Publication details: Fergus Barrowman, 2008

Part of: Sport

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Sport 36: Winter 2008

Saradha Koirala

page 199

Saradha Koirala

Zoo

after Zoo by Salla Tykkä, City Gallery Wellington

When I went to the zoo it was summer,
so yellow leaves did not lie like scabs
on the surface of the alligator's pool.

Crams of tourists in sensible shoes meant
I did not hear the clacking isolation of high heels
echoing around enclosures.

My Olympus camera and two rolls of film
did not render me weak through the tapering lens,
or prey to the brown fish-owl.

I measured myself against giraffes and the Kodiak bear
and did not hear Hitchcock's strings or imagine
wet limbs struggling through another's element.

My style was not symbolic of the tiger's remove.
Children ran, but could only scatter sparrows.

page 200

I Once Lived By Myself in a Tree-house

I once lived by myself in a tree-house near a tunnel.
I wove my nest in red and yellow
and lined it with patchwork squares.

Everything was tiny: the teapot, the stove, my spoons,
the corners of used envelopes
I composed notes on for the morning.

Perched above a bus stop, the windows rattled
with the idling number 12.
Engine crescendos threaded through my dreams.

Eventually I sellotaped a cut-out heart to my spare key
and gave it to you.
You kept it in the coin-part of your wallet
and knocked each night on my tiny front door.