Title: Sport 42: 2014

Editor: Fergus Barrowman

Publication details: Fergus Barrowman, 2014, Wellington

Part of: Sport

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Sport 42: 2014

Sugar Magnolia Wilson

page 216

Sugar Magnolia Wilson

Pup Art

We are in the backyard and you
have thrown my dog into the sky
she levitates somewhere over the
neighbour’s house, she is a long-haired
Golden Retriever, she catches the sun full whack
and shines hot like a star.

Before she floats any higher you
hurl a net over her body, peg
the twine taut to the lawn
so she is suspended against
the pull of space.

THIS IS ART!—you proclaim

your arms goalposts through
which only silence flies.

We all gaze up at my dog—
her face peaceful as she banks and
rolls forward.

Oh! someone gasps She’s like the
slow kid in gym class! Her gold threads
tangling with the net, her nose
lifting a little as though she smells cat
on the wind.

Pull her down! I cry
page 217 She’s just a little animal she is
not art she is so soft round the
edges—so tender at the centre.

But she is going, the peg hooved
from the ground the blue-town-sky
holding her up.

She whistles a little, a
small halo of mutt round her
nose, the long net a robe
sailing out behind her
as she moves off over the roofs
without once looking back

so yellow—

just that bit more
defined against the pure blue
than the rest of us.

page 218

The Monster

Frankenstein’s Monster was
born to peer at his assembled
humanity or lack of

in a world whose water had
turned to ice upon his arrival.

Think: a water-spider pushes from
its silked egg only to find the pulse
of the earth turned cold.

Its whittle-tipped legs slip and
slide on the mirrored surface which

shows the many-limbed creature
its own lurching darkness—

says here you are, horrible collection.

And it wasn’t that he
couldn’t love; he had
four dead babies crammed
into each eye socket—

like any child who longs
to care for a lost chick but
loves it to death instead.

If he had been able to
touch something gently,
he might have kissed the
soft curve of someone’s mouth but

with one hand a virgin’s
couth paw, the other
an executioner’s ironic fist
page 219 and with a cock made from the
thick and greening arm of a
19th-century wrestler

what hope had he of
even a simple embrace?

Yet despite the body, his mind—
a rich nebula

an endless alchemical rotation amongst the silent stars.

He said, I am the Adam of your
labours

this is what you’ve made,

please look at me

and there was a chance, for
just a moment, to peer
into the cool crust of the earth at
our selves

then to get behind that
ashen pack of huskies and
travel with him

beyond.

But no one looked

and he moved away
into the phantom ice
and we cannot find him.