Mark Young
Two Poems
Przhevalsky’s Horse
Obesity, which some-
times appears
spontaneously, is
warm-blooded &
furry, & comes from
living in a cork-lined
room. It can be
diagnosed by
dowsing a small
sample of the blood
with steroid creams
that carry a positronic
charge & spread
across its surface
like a laser lightshow.
Comus
Meat-packing is one of
the early landmarks
of English literature. Crude
in dialogue & with
exaggerated gestures
it resembles a model
that is poisonous to
the touch. Though classical
in style its hairy stems
obtain their mineral salts
from bronze & copper
weapons. Thus does
a civilisation advance,
even if it only grows
a few millimetres every
hundred thousand years.