Head Tree
by and published in Edition Two of Pomegranate
A fox’s head bursts out of a green bud.
‘Blast!’ it cries.
‘This is what you come back as for cheating at Patience
And other solo card games,’ I explain to the children.
A goat’s head falls from a high branch.
It bounces twice and rolls to my feet.
‘I will miss my sweet, sweet life,’ says the goat’s head
And gasps. I delicately close his eyelids.
‘That was my friend,’ I tell the children.
A bunch of horse heads hang like bananas,
Mumbling hotly into one another’s mouths.
‘But what do they come back as next?’ asks a little girl.
‘Nothing,’ I say. ‘Nothingness without end,
If you can conceive of that.’
Luke Kennard
Luke Kennard achieved brief notoriety when he became the youngest poet ever to be shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection 2007. This was for his second collection ‘The Harbour Beyond the Movie’. He is also the youngest poet to suffer from “old man’s leg” each morning – a condition which can take up to an hour of pacing around swearing to overcome. He is currently writing his PhD thesis on the prose poem at the University of Exeter.