The Art of Taxidermy
Page 1
About the Book
‘An intense exploration of grief.’ STEVEN HERRICKs
Later, I found a crow,
its feathers so black
they shone
with a blue tinge
in the bright sunshine.
It lay on its side
at the base of a jacaranda—
purple flowers scattered beneath—
as if it had fallen asleep,
floated down serenely
from a branch above.
I stroked its sleek feathers
expecting it to wake,
flap strong wings and fly off,
but it slept on.
The Art of Taxidermy is a moving and evocative verse novel about love and loss, and the way beauty can help make sense of it all.
For Matt and Jess
CONTENTS
COVER PAGE
ABOUT THE BOOK
TITLE PAGE
DEDICATION
LOVE
SLEEPING BEAUTY
THE COLLECTION
A GLASS HOUSE
BURIED TREASURE
ANNIE I
EGYPT
PRESERVATION I
AUNT HILDA
AUNT HILDA & UNCLE GRAHAM
MUSEUM
MOTHER’S ROOM I
WINTER I
EXPLORATION
A GIFT
HOME
CORELLA
FATHER’S STUDY
SCHOOL I
JEFFREY I
WINTER II
BIRDS
HEAT
BETRAYAL
SCHOOL II
SCHOOL HOLIDAYS I
BLACK GOLD
OMENS
OMA AND OPA AND OMENS
FUNERAL BIRDS I
VISITING
A DANCE
FATHER
LUNCH WITH FATHER
DEATH POINTERS
TAXIDERMY I
TAXIDERMY DREAMS
MOTHER'S ROOM II
FOX I
DEATH AT THE FUNERAL
UNCLE BERNARD
CLINGING
MOTHER MEMORY I
SPRING
WANDERING
FLIGHTLESS BIRDS
BRUISES
FOX II
A NOTE
NON-VERBAL READING
JEFFREY II
FRIENDS
DEAD
MOTHER MEMORY II
REMEDY
INVASION
BURIAL
SOLITUDE
DARK RECESSES
A GIFT FROM AUNT HILDA
FATHER’S REMEDY I
TAXIDERMY II
RAINBOW
IMPLEMENTS
MIDNIGHT I
A FLARE OF LIGHT
BLOOD I
BLOOD II
BLOOD III
BLOOD IV
DINNER
MIDNIGHT II
ALIVE
MOTHER MEMORY III
SUMMER AT OMA’S
PRESERVATION III
FIRE I
FIRE II
FIRE III
MO(U)RNING
FROM THE ASHES
SEASCAPE
GRAINY MEMORIES
OMA
SCENT
THE LIVING DEAD
THE LIZARD AND THE HARE
MOTHER MEMORY IV
RESURRECTION I
COUNTRY
LUFF DIE
LOVEDAY I
LAKE BONNEY
CORKS
BARMERA CEMETERY
THE TURNING OF THE BONES
LOVEDAY II
THE APOSTLES
QUESTIONS
SKIRTING LAKE BONNEY
DANCING WITH GHOSTS
MURDER I
LIKE SLAVES
INCINERATE
MIRROR DREAM
THE BURNING I
THE BURNING II
BANDAGES
MURDER II
MEAT
MOTHER MEMORY V
SILENCE I
FIRE GROUND
A FEBRUARY EVENING
ARS MORIENDI—THE ART OF DYING I
ARS MORIENDI—THE ART OF DYING II
THICKENING
THE BONE YARD
LINING UP THE DEAD
OMA’S BOX OF MEMORIES
ANNIE II
CARTWHEELS I
SCHOOL III
CONTRAST
FAMILY HISTORY
FAMILY I
FAMILY II
WAR I
OUTSIDERS
MY ANNIE
DEATH AND JEFFREY
DEATH: A POEM
WAR II
DRESSED FOR DINNER
A GIFT AND A CURSE
MORE GIFTS
SPELLS
PHOTOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE I
MOTHER MEMORY VI
GOLDEN BANDS I
GOLDEN BANDS II
THE SADNESS LINGERED
WHAT OF MOTHER?
DYING MANY DEATHS
MOSAIC MEMORIES
HUNTING I
HUNTING II
JEWELS I
JEWELS II
PHOTOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE II
REBELLION
BAD DREAMS
BONES AND BEAKS AND FEATHERS
BREAKFAST
CARTWHEELS II
THE BROKEN, THE BATTERED, THE DEAD
FOETAL
ANNIE III
SUNRISE
RETURNING TO THE WORLD
COLD GREY STREETS
ANSWERS
RECONSTRUCTING
BONES
STILL LIFE WITH SKULL
SILENCE II
POWER
FELINE
AUNT HILDA’S REMEDY
CLEOPATRA
BLACK
COUNSELLING
LAYING OUT THE BONES
EMPTY TOMBS
RESURRECTING MOTHER
THE DEAD OF NIGHT
FATHER’S REMEDY II
THE FINAL WORD
THE SMELL OF DEATH
THE TAXIDERMIST I
THE TAXIDERMIST II
THE TAXIDERMIST III
FUNERAL BIRDS II
GROUNDED
ENDINGS
THE ART OF TAXIDERMY
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
COPYRIGHT PAGE
LOVE
At the age of eleven
I fell in love
with death.
I found a gecko
in a dark corner
of a room.
Its lifeless eyes open,
its small bulbous toes
splayed
as if about to leap away.
I wanted to keep it,
to hold on.
I wanted to preserve
its lively expression.
I placed it on my dresser
and watched
its stomach deflate,
its scaly skin dry and curl
and the almost-leap
slowly decay.
SLEEPING BEAUTY
Later, I found a crow,
its feathers so black
they shone
with a blue tinge
in the bright sunshine.
It lay on its side
at the base of a jacaranda—
purple flowers scattered beneath—
as if it had fallen asleep,
floated down serenely
from a branch above.
I stroked its sleek feathers
expecting it to wake,
flap strong wings and fly off,
but it slept on.
I returned later
with a shoebox—
a ca
rdboard coffin—
and carried my sleeping beauty
home to accompany my
withering gecko.
THE COLLECTION
Three brown tree frogs,
two skinks,
one New Holland honeyeater,
one ant-eaten galah,
one dusty sparrow
and one fresh, cat-killed
red-belly black—
perfect,
except for
four small puncture marks.
A GLASS HOUSE
Father bought
a large glass aquarium
to house them,
to contain
the fusty fug of death.
BURIED TREASURE
I discovered a sheep’s skull
half-buried in a paddock
not far from the house.
I might never have noticed it
but for a small murder
of crows, feasting.
As I got closer, I could smell
the rotting flesh
and hear the hum of blowflies.
The crows yarked
and flapped away.
Blowflies scattered and buzzed.
The exposed side was picked clean
in places by birds and foxes.
White bone glinted in the bright day.
I tucked my nose and mouth
under my jumper
to avoid gagging
and sliced through a small piece
of woolly skin and sinew
until the skull came away.
The semi-buried side was damp with
skin and patchy grey wool,
and a withered eye.
ANNIE I
Annie was my best friend.
She was everything
I was not.
Her hair was the colour
of wheat at sunset,
her eyes as blue as a summer sky,
her lips the satin sheen of pink pearls,
her bone-white skin
never tanned.
She was pale and luminous,
a ghostly angel, but,
like me, she had a dark heart.
EGYPT
At school, Mr Morris
showed us slides of mummies,
long-dead kings and queens.
The earliest Egyptians
buried their dead in small pits
in the desert, where the heat
and dryness of the sand
dehydrated and preserved the bodies.
I thought of my sheep’s skull
and its semi-buried side.
I borrowed books about the Egyptians
and found photographs
of ancient people
enduring beyond death.
Decomposition akin to art:
the shrivelled limbs,
the shrunken shoulders and chest,
the exposed clavicle,
the long ropey necks,
the perfectly preserved ear,
the missing nose,
the full head of hair crowning
the withered face.
I tore my favourite pages
from the books.
PRESERVATION I
I studied my beautiful corpses,
in their different states
of decay.
I preserved their scales and bones
and beaks and claws and feathers,
stroke by fastidious pencil stroke,
in dozens of sketchbooks,
with drawings and notes.
AUNT HILDA
That girl, she exclaimed,
having seen my latest addition—
the sheep’s skull.
She is turning into a freak!
Annie and I peered through the crack
in the double sliding-doors.
Father smoked his cigar,
his full-bearded face expressionless.
She’s fine.
His words, accompanied
by a large plume of white smoke,
drifted to the ceiling.
She is a girl, Wolfgang!
My aunt stood abruptly, hands on wide hips.
Charlotte needs dolls and…women.
Not dead things!
Father released a smoky sigh.
I knew what he was thinking—
It was not his fault that Mother had died
and we were left alone.
I will take her. She can live with me.
I held my breath. I could not bear it.
She is fine, Father said,
locking eyes.
I breathed out.
She has a scientist’s heart.
It is in the genes. She is curious
and she is bright.
AUNT HILDA & UNCLE GRAHAM
Aunt Hilda lived in a cottage
around the corner and up the road—
turn left, then right, then left again.
Aunt Hilda had no children,
and Uncle Graham—
whose photographs
lined the mantelpiece
and an assortment of dressers
and hall tables and cabinets
throughout the house—
died in the war.
Uncle Graham’s face radiated
cheerfulness,
Aunt Hilda’s, contentment,
a modest, happy smile.
In every photo of them together
their arms or hands
or fingers were entwined,
their bodies turned slightly
towards each other.
I did not go to my aunt’s house often
as she was mostly at ours,
cleaning and cooking and caring for me,
while Father worked
long days at the university.
But when I did go
I found the photos mesmerising.
I looked at them again and again
searching for clues of the past,
clues from the days
when my mother and father
were together,
happy.
MUSEUM
On a class trip to the dimly lit
Egyptian Room,
I could not tear my eyes away
from a pair of severed,
high-arched feet.
The bones almost visible
beneath the yellowed skin,
long and thin.
Talus, calcaneus, metatarsals, phalanges
hallux—long toes, third, fourth and fifth toes.
Mr Morris tapped the glass to the beat of
the names.
Those feet, the way
the mummified toes
curled claw-like—
especially the long, long toe—
looked just like Father’s.
In the same cabinet
were two blackened hands,
one long and slender,
one small and thickly knuckled,
wearing a silver ring,
and a sleeping head
resting on a pillow.
A long straight nose
and a grimacing mouth
divided his face,
his eyelids half-closed over
dark holes.
Yellow light bounced from
his smooth black forehead.
He lay as lifeless
as a dark stone sculpture,
as indecipherable as
an Egyptian hieroglyph,
but thousands of years ago
he walked and talked
and breathed.
MOTHER'S ROOM I
I visited Mother’s room.
Circled her silent bed,
ran my fingers along the edge,
tried to imagine her lying there
on her back.
Drifting into sleep,
not death.
Sometimes I climbed
onto the gold brocade bedspread
; and lay with my arms
folded across my chest
like a mummy
or a coffin-bound corpse.
I never cried.
I do not remember much
about Mother.
She was a shadow
that hovered in the dark corners
of the house.
Her name was always spoken
in a whisper—
Adrianna, Adrianna.
Long vowels
rolling in waves
of pain through air.
WINTER I
Through my bedroom window
Annie and I watched
the grey day brighten
as the sun broke the clouds.
We breathed our own clouds
of condensation onto the cold glass
and watched yellowing leaves
drift down from the moulting robinia.
A wattle bird wrestled
with a moth on a branch,
its red cheeks lit like rubies
by the sudden sunshine.
We decided to go for a walk
to search for ‘specimens’.
Father suggested this word,
for use around Aunt Hilda.
EXPLORATION
We marched along with a hessian bag
to the edge of the suburbs,
then weaved our way to the creek.
We walked with eyes cast down
scanning for specimens,
for any form of death,
but the day was teeming with life—
magpies speared the ground,
mudlarks picked through long grass,
galahs chink-chinked as they flew overhead,
rosellas chattered from distant bushes,
blackbirds scratched and foraged.
The ground was soft with mud,
winter grass and broad-leafed weeds
and little crops of fungi breaking through.
We walked and walked in the brittle air,
noses red and damp with cold,
fingers numb, shoes and socks wet.
The day brightened and darkened
as the sun swung through the afternoon
and then began to set.
Black clouds blurred the horizon
like dark mountains.
Others stained pink as the day died.
A GIFT
We headed home across paddocks
where white-winged birds
fought for roosts in the trees—
a clatter and cackle of corellas.
Annie grinned and took off
at breakneck down the hill
and the pack exploded into flight
and an ear-splitting chorus.
They wheeled overhead
and settled on the ground.
Annie galloped at them,
whooping with joy.
Again, the explosion
and a cacophonous cry, as they circled
and settled like white flags
in the surrounding gums.