Black Phillip
Are
you still a corpse?
the
old man in his apartment
lanky
wan thighs
upside
down milk crate
Can
he see Black Phillip
from
the balcony
the
goat he drank
from
two teats
outside
L’Occitane
the
farm now abandoned
tourists
eating Roquefort cheese
Back
Phillip est bête noire
Sunday
morning I saw his wife
peer
from the window
It’s
mating season for birds
Milk Depression
Mother
raised 20 buffalo
no
cows
40
brown nipples
pear-shaped
sly
eyes cry
blacky
paki
ears
tagged
for
mass production
sold
in
Bhopal
years
later (1984)
chemical
leak
methyl
isocyanate
majh
murderer
streets
littered
buffalo
carcasses
Milk does not do a body good
Steinbeck
Father
did
not latch
refused
to feed
Mother
national
geographic breasts
an
engorged Himalayan
Father
drank
from two nipples
bleat
bleat
Mother
gave
birth
to
a stillborn
like
Steinbeck’s Rose of Sharon
Mandy Sandhu is a poet based in Oakville, Ontario. Her debut chapbook The Temporary Space of a Placenta, was published by above/ground press last year. She participated in the above/ground press 32nd anniversary reading in Ottawa, ON. Her work, often in sonnet form, blends vivid imagery with sharp observation, drawing inspiration from writers like Slyvia Plath, the Beats, Ted Berrigan and Dale Smith. Mandy has been working in the Post Secondary for 15 years.