Lonesome George's membership is approved

Pinta Island tortoises extinct after death of Lonesome George

Perth Now, 25 June 2012

Of late the chatter among
the teetering cloth-skinned ones
has been about the Smithsonian

but I have long been pearling
a yearning to move to London.
I want to be closer to Darwin.

So reverse my living putrefaction
with injections of formaldehyde
set off with blown glass eyes

from Venice. I belong among
the mummies in the British Museum
inseparable from their carapaces,

a crystal enclosure in Kensington
my more likely destination
between the dodo and the mastodon.

I'm ready now for refined society
lists swelling like the Ganges
a queue ever at the turnstile.

I am more valuable extinct
than when I was merely unique,
like a stolen Picasso or Matisse.


(c) 2012 Slush Poet