Anniversary
by Andrew Slattery
He steps in off the paddock
and into the kitchen, gripping
the back of a twitchy chicken body—
blood still spurts from its open neck
and dotters red spacks to the wall,
four white feathers fly and its legs
still going like mad. She tells him
the chicken’s still alive and he says
‘Why don’t we have a child?’
and recalls the honeymoon
they took to Osaka last autumn
where the quiet snow fell like feathers
through the red trees and she told him
how love is a strange flower.
____________________________
Andrew Slattery is a Sydney poet whose work has appeared in
magazines, journals, and newspapers throughout Australia, Europe,
and North America. His awards include the Henry Kendall, Roland
Robinson, and Val Vallis poetry awards. Slattery is mentored by
poet Judith Beveridge. His debut collection will be out early 2009
through the Australian Poetry Centre.
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Apple Valley Review:
A Journal of Contemporary
Literature
ISSN 1931-3888
Volume 3, Number 2
(Fall 2008)
Copyright © 2008
by Leah Browning, Editor.
All future rights to material
published in the Apple
Valley Review are retained
by the individual authors
and artists.
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