Flying-Fox - Albert Wendt

More rat than bird,
more superstition than fox,
you hang from that banyan
branch like a deflated black
umbrella and, when you flap
through the sky across a waxen
moon and the dead rise up
to haunt me, you’re more
real than Batman.

With your razor-sharp teeth
you eat the ripe mangoes
and pawpaw in my plantation;
but wait until I catch you:
I’m going to skin you, gut you,
roast you, and eat you.
I’ll enjoy the eating because
I’ll be chewing Batman,
Count Dracula, and all superstitions
about vampires.

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Albert Wendt (born 1939) Samoa
Source: Scottish Poetry Library