Tuesday, 20 May 2014

The Taxidermist's Shop

I submitted this to a magazine a while ago and never heard anything back so I'm assuming it's ok to publish it now:

Through a pane of elderly glass,
besmirched by years of inattention,
they gaze out -
a menagerie of vacant faces,
surveying the empty street,
ill-lit by adulterated London beams.

A bear.
A badger.
A bat.

Animals, exotic and otherwise,
hold silent court, breathless and
becalmed in perpetual stillness.
They have been
made eternal by the purveyor
of a dying art, and keep company
forever with the bettors and diners

who stare occasionally,
open-mouthed for a moment,
affording them a split second's
amazement before they walk away,
and leave them, flightless and sightless
still.

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