the zoo was never an ark

men climbed the great domes

and towers to bring back to earth

spires bells crosses

to melt into money

to build a zoo

when the flood came priests told us

the zoo was never an ark

on the news I saw

a bear floating on a heat-pump

a hippo dead in a drain

I never saw the elephant

or the little wooden steps

that climbed her back

or the terrible

steel hook of her keeper

I like to think

an angel returned

her to Kenya

to collect grey skin

bones tons of ivory

to build elephants   

Kerrin P. Sharpe

Kerrin P. Sharpe’s first book three days in a wishing well was published by Victoria University Press (VUP) in 2012. A group of her poems also appeared in 2013 in the UK publication Oxford Poets 13 (Carcanet). A second book there’s a medical name for this was also published by VUP in 2014 and her third collection rabbit rabbit has just been published this year (July 2016).

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