Thyacine
Tasmanian tiger
Tasmanian wolf
carnivorous marsupial
kept young in pouch
native to Australia, Tasmania, New Guinea
Thyacine is to Australia
What Sasquatch is to North America
Been sighted but not recently penned or captured
Sasquatch might be a myth
Thyacine only went extinct eighty-seven years ago
in 1936
So, Tasmanian Rain
Don't fall on the plane.
It's four-eighty in cash.
If you want a hot bath.
That's lost down the drain.
Gone Madly Insane.
TASMANIAN DEVILS
The house next door
had flames in the windows
We watched from the street as
the firemen arrived, four rigs responding,
Engine Company 5 – The Tasmanian Devils
Engines and ladders, axes and hoses, abundant
testosterone surrounded and entered, laid into
that fire like an infantry platoon doing necessary
work through the hedgerows of France in the
summer of ‘44
“Cute little girl!” said the tall young man as
the water and smoke later sizzled
in the char
Twelve years later, at a different address,
three rigs responding, Tasmanian Devils and a
gasoline smell in the storm sewer system, same
tough young men, little action this time, a band
of paratroopers with no enemy in sight
The tall fire lieutenant remembered my face
but not my new wife and proffered the question
to set memory right
“How’s your little girl?” said the voice of
command with the steely gray eyes
I said “She died a year later!” and he looked through
us both, reached for the catalogue of the suffering he
had seen, shifted his gaze and called out to his men,
mounted his rig and tightened his face, surprised
once again at the number of ways that
a fireman finds death!
The Tasmanian tiger
The last one died in captivity in 1936
and that was a sad moment for humanity,
added to the list of animals we have eliminated over the years.
The Tasmanian tiger was easy to kill. It didn´t know
how cruel we are.
There have been sightings of it by gullible people, but it is an illusion
based on regrets and unspoken longings.
I, also hope, it exists somewhere, but it is a dream,
yet I have seen the animal in clouds formation in the sky
forever condemning us for what we did.
Pups, imps, joeys, wiggling tailed marsupials, hunting in parties of five.
Deadly facial cancer has killed lots of us, it’s a wonder I am still alive.
I screech when I eat, carrion, my utmost favorite food, road kill.
My aggression insured me at babyhood alive I would be still.
There were fifty in my litter, but only four teats so we scrappers had to fight.
Growling and viciously, snarling at each other, slapping away nice ones in the night.
Our mother was grabbed by a caveman devil who dragged her off by the neck.
I was incensed, and promptly chased after them, thinking “what the heck?”
Some of my siblings were frightened out of the old hollow log,
not many decided to stay.
I was not one of them. I showed my teeth,
and my aggressors promptly ran away.
Wombats, wallabies, opossums and other animals on this island of mine.
Steer clear of my hollow log, knowing I will
snap them up and eat them in no time.
Looking for the formal definition, structure, and history of this poetry form? Visit the Poetry Dictionary entry below. Then return to explore how PoetrySoup members bring the form to life through their own poems.