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