Sasquatch

Tonight, at my dinner date,

I kept thinking about the sasquatch,

and in particular: what is it? where is it now?

It’s not that my date was hirsute.

I could tell from his chin that

he had less hair on his legs than I do in winter

so perhaps it was the hairs clinging

to the mussels in their tomato marinade

or the fact that the first peach had

fallen from the tree in the courtyard.

But re the sasquatch, I would throw

hunks of steak onto my begonias if I knew I would

be keeping a legend alive in the process,

and my garden is a patch of my soul.

Finally, I would have an act of faith!

Conversation eluded us like

the mussels did my fork

and I wanted to shrug and say:

We have different coloured tongues.

But there was a pot plant in my peripheries

that when I squinted, as I do when bored,

looked like the hair of my best friend at Kindergarten

and I chorused to myself:

Jenny McDonald!—she had

gone into a coma and woken up with a

longing to paint chrysalises—it was almost

something one could make

a conversation out of.

But nothing passed between us, not even the bread.

If you imagine the sasquatch always on the run,

you reach a point of empathy, but he

was just sitting there with his mouth closed

and I found myself hoping he would foot the bill,

or be swept up the Empire State in a silk dress

that would make the most of his pearl-bare legs.

Jake Arthur

Jake Arthur is a postgraduate student at Victoria University whose poetry began as the frustrated result of not having enough time to write prose, but soon grew into a pet-project in its own right.