A Zoo, Reversed
The park is locked, so we patrol
its wonky rhomboid perimeter,
scan grassy distances
with envious eyes.
Inside the fence, frogspawn
is bubbling, coot feathers fluffing.
Rhizomes, April-ready, poke up
slender green periscopes
to look beyond the wire;
it’s us who are the captives,
hungry for each chirp that floats
in our direction, every wayward leaf.
Alex Josephy lives in London and Italy. Her collection, Naked Since Faversham, was published by Pindrop Press in 2020. Other work includes Other Blackbirds, Cinnamon Press, 2016, and White Roads, poems set in Italy, Paekakariki Press, 2018. Her poems have won the McLellan and Battered Moons prizes, and have appeared in magazines and anthologies in the UK and Italy. Find out more on her website: http://www.alexjosephy.eu
new boots and pantisocracies 