IGGY MCGOVERN

 

from Outback haiku

 
Pointless to enter
The wardrobe: two Christmases
And never winter
 
The bush kangaroo
Expresses sincere regrets
Tsk, tsk, tsk, poor you!
 
The koala bear
Is misclassified, which is
More than he can bear
 
That lone crocodile
Swallowed no alarm clock so
Can laze for a while
 
The swamp wallaby
Cannot seem to make head nor
Tail, at all, of me
 
The huntsman spider
Dashing off a stirrup-cup
Unseats this rider
 
Giant flat earthworm
Is it coming or going
Ohne drang und sturm?
 
The brushtail possum
Dines out in my wheelie bin
How was it? Awesome!
 
The lonesome dingo
Tries to chat up city dogs
In the wrong lingo
 
The common wombat
Will wisely never engage
In unarmed combat
 
Marsupial mole
Aged thirteen and three-quarters
Diary most droll
 
In Wagga Wagga
Undoubtedly, the tail will
Wagga the dogga

Wellington Bob

 
What passable cup drove you to enter 
My City Gallery poetry reading? 
You were quiet until it was ‘question time’ 
Then ranted about ‘The One’, inviting 
The audience to, as it were, go forth 
And multiply! Which I so richly 
Deserved for my lame joke that the rhyme 
For ‘death’ in Yeats’ epitaph 
Was not really ‘breath’ but ‘meth’! 
In brewery tones you confide in me 
That you are known to the local gendarmes: 
They cry out ‘Bob, Bob, heal thyself, 
Come down from the cross of the Majestic Centre 
The one with the post-post-modern crown of thorns’ 
 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Iggy McGovern lives in Dublin, where he is Associate Professor of Physics at Trinity College; his poetry has appeared in Irish and international journals. His first collection, The King of Suburbia, was published by The Dedalus Press in 2005 and received both The Ireland Chair of Poetry Award and The Glen Dimplex New Writers’ Award for Poetry in 2006. He is currently visiting Australia as a Distinguished Fellow of The Institute for Advanced Study at La Trobe University in Melbourne.

 

Return to 2006 contents >