![]() ![]() The beautiful box of the beautiful body (did you see the Crown Jewels? Stole a shiny diamond the size of an egg, talk about the pot calling the kettle black.) Priest chanting spell at the offal hole, Dust to dust. Your revenge of restless, reckless prattle. Rob’s not the only jealous one, you, with your strutting and prancing, your tricks and your jokes. There she sits while the world flies by, deceiving herself. Lured to it bit by bit like the bits of bacon that banged her into a trap. Marnie got stuck right in, eh? Just like the trap your sister sits in. ![]() Tama! When humans take birds, something always gets caught in the cross. Your sister followed every trick your father taught, she could take the sting from the wasp, but would she listen? Missed the twisty sting of a human trick, down, down she goes. Puffed yourself up to fly on the air in a Superman cape, and you thought to tag onto the flock? Oho. The whole world watching your tricks, vain Tama. Stuffing the soft centre of your nest, right round the bed and Marnie. Helpless dead women all over TV, naked dead women all caught in the net.Īll caught up, Tama, nothing good can come. You stack up those words on purpose, I cackle and chortle but shut up, shut up OF COURSE you mean what you say when you over-excite and shriek out your splats of shit. The author, and Marty Smith (Photo: Florence Charvin) Saying you don’t understand what you say. The Secretary, what does she know of the air and the bird? We see small and we hear. You bet your pretty neck is an alarm, Tama, oh Tama, in the smashed-yellow house, your eye swivelling, my neck feathers pricking. You bet your pretty neck he knows who it is in your scrambled-egg house. Wring your neck, run you down, your father is watching, watching. Naked dead women all over TV, powerless women all over the net. The strand, Tama, of Marnie’s hair - that you weave as lining, in and out, the ties of Marnie’s fertilised egg and its broken yolk, dead mothers and living mothers and babies and death by … did you have to be so rough? Does the male have to be so cruel? There you go building your nest, oh Tama gone-alone, winding the stems of the-way-of-the-wild through the solid blocks of the-way-of-the-house. (This is not true, says my human, those are other birds from far away.) Things do not go well for birds who go to humans of their own accord. When your birds turn their backs on you one by one, tainted Tama, oh, unease, unease - my heart grows small and hides. Enchantment! Raking up embers of spells, by the pricking of my thumbs, a prick of blood, the dark shadow drifting. Ha, pierce human eyes! Drink their blood! Wind them up, Tama, it thrills them to believe we carry a drop of devil’s blood glowing ruby on our tongues. Glee! delight! when your father’s eyes light up blood-red in the sun. Too-sad Tama, perched far below the rest of the birds, keeping a sight-line to the yolk-yellow house. Too-small Tama, to be left out on your own reeking of humans. True-clear the sounds down the valley when she takes you back, songs of low-nothing birds, dogs on their chains, and the quad bike, (I was lost from a farm) -my heart clutching like claws. Tama-too-small to see slippery surfaces in humans. Oh, fluttery-scared at the dead birds in the freezer, I shriek Alarm! and lift up when he lifts the thing -īang on! with the sound of the skid and slide across the slippy lid, I think, Just right! as I thud-pound down to crouch in beside you, dusty behind the cylinder. Poor baby Tama in the blank-wall-angle house, flying blind, bashing into corners. Little bird I still am, and I oh, I couldn’t drift, Tama, ear and eye all around for danger, scaredy-bird, distressed right from the start. Sky drawing down dark and grim over Marnie’s farm. ![]() My human is reading to me on the steps in the sun, because she loves me.īut it’s not … no, sliding into trance, Tama, cold change coming in from the South, a whiff of offal pit floating on the wind. We called upon writer Marty Smith to nudge her magpie, Pecky, to review Tama’s work. In Catherine Chidgey’s latest novel The Axeman’s Carnival, the story is told by a compelling magpie called Tama.
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