qarrtsiluni

by Irene Brown

“It could’ve been a trip to reach the stars
aboard Virgin Galactic flights.” My arse.
The fare’s at least a coupla hundred K!
Be that as it may.
Their pensions weren’t stretching to the moon–
‘cept in a fluked, off-route hot air balloon.

So, decades graded, they choose the Big Game plan.
A group safari: three whole weeks with strangers.
Star lit skies and camp fire meals with rangers;
walk with Grevy’s zebra, wildebeest
(I’d rather be deceased)
an overnight with some poor tribesman

who has to deal with khakied matching hats
(all waterproofed in case of a monsoon)
Howard and Hildas with keen binoculars
finding rhino, flamingos (but no cougars!)
the odd baboon
their purring tabbies swapped for snarling cats.

Beneath acacias Masai guard the camp
as distant lions roar; hyenas laugh,
but sparring in a rare Rothschild giraffe
is nothing to the foreign sounds that seep
under the flap:
Kalahari Karaoke’d make you weep.

Never been inclined to hunt in packs
preferring, like the heart, to hunt alone
and bunk up in my own sweet bivouac.
Savannah star jumps? Yuck! And new best friends?
Too hard to blend.
The whole thing makes me groan.

Hell is other people (I’m with Sartre)
I think I’ll stage a daring coup de théâtre.
Close by I hear a thousand buffalo thundering
and I’m wondering…
How to get out of Africa; just breakaway?
Oh fuck! gie me the mike– ‘A Wimoweh…’

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Irene Brown started writing late in life and has been published in a variety of media and has successfully performed her work on the Edinburgh Fringe several times. A pamphlet, Glass Slippers, was published in 2008 by Calder Wood Press (CWP) and a joint pamphlet with Anna Dickie entitled Imprint was published by Jaggnath Press in 2011. She currently writes for Edinburgh Guide.