Cocky’s Holiday (1)
By:
August 5, 2010
HiLobrow won’t be publishing any installments of James Parker’s novel The Ballad of Cocky the Fox this month. Nor will we, this month, publish new issues of The Sniffer, Patrick Cates’ Cocky-related newsletter. Like Cocky, Parker and Cates are British; in August, they aestivate.
Cocky will return on September 2. The Sniffer will return on September 9. Until then, here’s a poem by James Parker.
death speaks to cocky the fox
The .22 splits a grass-blade, half an inch from your nose:
its sound, a second later, shakes the rooks
from their cawing
and their old-school jawing
and scatters them into the sky like seeds.
I had a taste of you when that pitbull chewed you up.
And when the half-brick thrown by the loud girl
clonked you into momentary satori
I smiled at you, emptily. Remember?
Other dogs have gone for you — some cats, too.
The wheel of a shopping cart broke one of your ribs:
a nudge from me, a hint.
The pigeon with the poisoned breast,
the snare where Agony makes her nest.
Stand by, fox. I’m arriving.