BUNNY (2001)

Selima Hill

LITTLE DOGS

She feels so proud to be so under-nourished

and not to have her aunts all turning up

with little dogs on leads, and tartan rugs;

she feels so proud to be alone at home

like someone in a hangar after midnight

entrusted with the mothering of jets.

POOL

Athletic and chaste,

she plunges into the pool,

leaving the lodger

alone in the house with the dust

and nothing to shine on or do,

like a chandelier.

EGG

And when the lodger, on the second day,

asks her if she knows the work cock

and she looks ahead and simply starts walking,

steadying the word like an egg.

BALACLAVA

Because she knows he likes her curly hair

she goes to bed

in a dampened balaclava

like some old ship

that's never going to make it

rocking itself to sleep inside a shed.

MILK

The neighbours and their elderly Retrievers

get used to seeing someone sitting there,

sometimes dressed in nothing but a nightie,

fiercely spooning milk from a tin.