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3 poems by
Christopher Barnes
> bio

The New Chef

Cabbage is a tinge she whacks
with the bulk-bodied chopper
we gulp down supper.


The Old Goat

Rutter's shrivelled in no time
by rag-tags, scurf.
He plots to be wrapped up
by 5 maudlin nannies.

Death hesitates
in the balance-trembling lovelock
of his moustache.
Fear inclines
to go down.


The Palaeolithics

They've been dreaming again.
Animals of the hunt
bled onto the dried-skin walls,
cold-breathed caves.

First impression, finger marks.
Liquification, ores becoming brittle.

Fixity for a moment in time,
an eon of small buffets, grit.

These fierce beasts charge their wool
spiking across scapes of overlap,

where the bogeyman waits
in the darkest part of dark.

In Altamira the Hall of Bulls
shivers on the peripheral

self-sealing circle of night -
hairy, goosebumped,

individual as a tattoo.

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