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2 poems by Chris Kerr

Bird Strike


You know, the windmills, boom, boom, boom [mimicking windmill sound] bing [mimes shooting large gun], that’s the end of that one. If the birds don’t kill it first. The birds could kill it first. They kill so many birds.


The albatross drops

like a tress from the blade.

The turbines stop

at Turnberry.


Trump’s on his knees at the Alba trough.

It’s tough down the wind farm.

The stationary cross

lost an arm in an accident with itself.

The air’s taking industrial action.

Try firing chlorinated wrong bird at


the lapsing of the lapwing

from the ecosystem.

The thighs are the wings of the lap

from the cloaca

though the left ankle’s broken.

Species space isn’t gap,

breezy dove tessellation

over national borders.

Nor is the state bird

our bill of health.


The lame duck orders

thighs or breast to the green.

Mr President, we need an albatross.


Antarctic See


McMurdo Station, the ol’ US glampsite,

has thawed to a strip town:

a skid for diggers of desert soil to spin

in and out of.

The population’s cultured

from cult, to church,

to people. Here is the steeple.


Two lovers in light attire

bundle down the breccia

as if the continent wasn’t spent.

Easy to forget having ordered the ice

off the rocks.

Relax. The glaciers were

constipation’s sparkling diarrhoea beaker.

Then the diarrhoea.


The lovers hoe a

vineyard, watched by the Swiss Guard.

A scion goes in the rootstock

in iron-red soil.

Their graft won’t take. Shh

the laugh is thinking

it would’ve taken graft.

Recycle harder:

the voice of the Father.

Never crossing fossil fuel scions

with easy humanity.


The view from the Papal satellite?

The first Antarctic Cardinal’s zucchetto

perpetually demoted

from the white cap.

__________________________


Chris Kerr is from London and lives in Edinburgh. His first pamphlet, Citidyll, was published by Broken Sleep Books. His poems have appeared in Ambit, Adjacent Pineapple, Blackbox Manifold, Haverthorn, Oxford Poetry, The Literateur and the Sidekick Books Headbook Battalion. Chris tweets @c_c_kerr.

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