by Jennifer Compton

---

i found a bat in my raincoat sleeve
my coat is not a habitat

i shook them
(squinched-faced little blighter

give me a fright, would you?)
out into the sunlight

and once, a lizard in my sandshoe
a hole in the toe

(as luck would have it)
the lizard squeezed out

a sliver of quicksilver 
(i thought my foot was melting)

once a spider fell on my head
a big hairy huntsman

(it was late, i was tired)
a soothing and delicious

swatch of warm velvet
went sliding down my face

---

Jennifer Compton used to live in Wingello on the Southern Highlands of NSW but now she lives in Melbourne out on the Frankston line. Recent work has appeared in Antipodes, Four W, Not Very Quiet, Poetry New Zealand, The Frogmore Papers, Verity La, and in the new anthology of spoken word, Solid Air.