rave sketch - forbidden pond

should the notched leather chain

unlink or come loose overnight

the pond she

bled from her ears

to fill will brighten dotted with

lilies, which she’ll later see as lizards

bloated in gruesome death, their eyes like

shallow tattoos of Brahman depths.

her too-small bra’s hook

will poke out at her sternum

under his hand, skin around her thigh bones

too taut for movement

and she’ll fall unaided to ground

hardened by dearth, she won’t move all day.

should the bottom bolt rake through

earth the rabbit shit red carpet

sheep will enter

curious, lame themselves slipping

into the pond where they’ll drown and slowly melt –

next year, let naked swimmers find them

formed like a swathing

membrane on

their newborn porcupine skin. fleece

clumped and caramelised, a gummy shrunken carcass

loose bones jutting like broken stain glass

from mud made of every baby’s first defecation.

and let the screams carry

in fugue over four ancient hills.

on the fifth hill, let a scream prime be created

and on the sixth hill, the last before meditation village

let only the diamond flash

of sage oil vapours hint at human life.

should the garbage bag fasteners

unsheathe like yellow

lightning rods, and the keep out

sign topple

into a stinking wallow

statuary genitals will be sinkers tied to lines

girdling rancid steak meat

paling after so many hours in the water.

the biggest yabbies –

the yabbies with blood-red pincers

closed like thumb and index

around a guitar pick, circle

uncaring. she dives headfirst

for the meat. she takes the marble phallus.

by mistake? bubbles eking from the bone-spiked

mud sometimes play perfect A-chords.