Mark Totterdell
TALPA
We move unfelt, unsmelt, just underneath
your world. Our spit charms tasty worms to sleep.
Our necessary earthworks mar the smoothness
of your surfaces, so we must die;
no need to fit us up for greater crimes.
No outraged protests; we’re not stripy-cute.
The means of death are manifold. Our killers
have their own word, belong to their own guild.
VIPERA
Its image is printed, far bigger than life,
on an angled board. Text attempts
to capture its essence, neutralise its venom,
tells me to be aware,
but it’s not there.
My path sidewinds though grassy sandmounts,
by thickets of privet and bramble,
the seablue of its own bugloss,
green tongues of fern licking the air,
but it’s not there.
ANGUIS
It’s no worm,
and it twists quick.
‘It’s not a snake
but a legless lizard’,
but what’s a snake
but a lizard that lost
its legs in another time?
Words squirm. It writes
and writes and writes
itself in cursive script.
Seized, there’s the
endless anguish
of autotomy,
the shed tail
writhing and
writhing and
writhing as if
it weren’t
severed
for ever
from
the
heart.
CHORTHIPPUS
thippus
thippusthippus
thippusthippusthippuschor
thippuschorthippuschorthippus
assgr
assgrassgr
assgrassgrassgrassgr
assgrassgrassgrassgrasshoppper
BISTON
Here it is;
rear pairs of legs
clasped to a branch
as if it had sprouted there,
body stretched straight
at a convincing angle,
textured like bark
and studded with gnarly bits,
dark eyes even like a bud.
Here it is
on page 111;
the printed reproduction
of a detailed illustration
designed to look just like
that caterpillar
that looks just like a twig.
Here it is,
a poem about it.
Copyright © Mark Totterdell 2017
Mark Totterdell’s poems have appeared in journals including The Curly Mind, Ink, Sweat and Tears, The Rialto and Stand. His collection This Patter of Traces was published by Oversteps Books in 2014.