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Phillip A Ellis

Emily Dickinson’s Birds

Though you would ride me, with hair from back
to bum, the dance attracts you when you want more than two
to dance with, some threeway quadrille look

is what chafes in you. So how can we resume
this civilised life, with teapot warmed in a late June
after lunch, with water biscuits and cheese? No mistake,

you would love to sting me, you dying masculine bee,
even though your protestations lack all plausibility
that you would not dream such. Such is a matter of belief,

not in the strange caresses of my huggly hunny bear,
who bellows out ‘I love you’ like a plane in the morning air,
trailing words the way the winds rattles a leaf

of a palm, against its trunk. I have seen you, these days,
standing out against the atmosphere like there is no haze
to make the coast more romantic. Take Surfers, then, join

the ranks of the toolies, and leave me alone: partake
of that great smorgasboard of the barely legal, and take
your hand off my knee, leave me with my sea-dark wine.

Phillip A. Ellis

Phillip A. Ellis

Phillip A. Ellis is an external student studying English Honours at the University of New England. He has a chapbook, The Flayed Man, published by Gothic Press, and a concordance to the poetry of Donald Wandrei by Hippocampus Press. A collection of his poetry influenced by that of Clark Ashton Smith will also be published by Hippocampus Press. Phillip is the editor of AustralianReader.com.

 
 
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