An excerpt from The shame of our island
is that we killed the wolf.
Not just the last
but the two before that.
I knew a man who met a man
who was the cousin removed
of the great-grandson of the man
who killed the third-last wolf
on the island.
Slit it he did,
to see the steaming innards —
how long they were, how tightly wound.
Had it a white paw to the fore?
That gene would have been recessive.
The shame of our island is part of the collection Heat Signature (Seren Books, an imprint of Poetry Wales Press, 2017)
- About the author: Siobhan Campbell was born in Dublin. Her collections of poetry are Cross-Talk (Seren), The Permanent Wave and The Cold that Burns (Blackstaff Press) and chapbooks The water speaks in tongues (Templar) and Darwin Among the Machines (Rack Press).
Kanlaon 