Ivan Head: ‘Dark Emu Diner’ and ‘Dear Editor’

Dark Emu Diner

Koala Farm
does not butcher the methaneous cow.
Only roo will do,
or bandicoot under the counter.

Dark emu drumsticks
dry beneath the southern sky,
so that the Parliamentary dining room
can serve mock-cassowary pie.

Michelin Hats use wombats’
milk for mozzarella,
but nothing beats
quattro gusti bandicoot on pizza.

Franz Ferdinand shot platypus for platypie,
when visiting Sydenie.
He stuffed some back in Austria
some years before the War.

But most of all be very wary
of the recipe beginning:
“First find your dark emu,
then make a magic pudding”.

Ivan Head

Dear Editor

I have discovered that all Europeans
possess two to four percent
Neanderthal DNA:

The Nobel scientist
has the complete genome
in the bag. But I am an outlier

from a world that never went away.
Neanderthal genes at ten percent.
I span 600,000 years.

My hands do seem kind of large,
and I like leopard-hunting on the steppes
Sometimes I grunt or do not speak at all.

My brows are solid
and I am drawn to caves
and drawn in caves.

Retro-engineered in the lab
I align with the New Thylacine.
They have taken all my pluripotent cells

to multi-clone me in the dish.
I shall take my bronto-burger rare
at Number One, Siberian Cave.

Ivan Head