The Mandarin Duck by Matthew James Friday


 

Matthew James Friday has had poems published in numerous international magazines and journals, including, recently: The Brasilia Review (Brazil), Dawntreader (UK), New Contrast (South Africa) and Poetry Salzburg (Austria). A mini-chapbook titled  All the Ways to Love was published by the Origami Poems Project (USA).

     http://matthewfriday.weebly.com/

 

 

 


 

 

 

       

 

  

 

The Mandarin Duck


 

As if Kandinksy wanted to draw a bird

made out of orange rind, fortune cookies,

the lines of Chinese calligraphy pens,

bars of snow, shyness of a new Geisha,

boldness of the Great Wall, freshly built.

 

Hidden amongst limp, dripping bracken

bare silver birch trees, the winter swamp

ponds of Epsom Common – an exotic jewel,

the male Mandarin outrageously dressed,

the Dandy of damp British woods, dainty

 

movements on the water, keeping an eye

on the female, herself an abstract display

of browns, creams, a strike of white. Such

a pair should be strutting Lord and Lady.

They take cover in their own muffled myth.

 

Matthew James Friday

 

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