WHAT THE BADGER SAID

Katherine Venn

That there are at least eleven different kinds 

of love, and love lives mostly underground. 

That love can stink, and stink can help you to survive. 

Love wears its own grizzled face with pride. 

Love can be solitary. Love can find itself happy in a clan. 

Love sleeps under root and bramble, where no one else can. 

That love can gallop. No one expects this.

That love loves the night. It’s where we find our bliss.  

Love can eat anything – worms, insects, grubs, roots. 

Love can get drunk on rotting fruit. 

That some men will hunt love for sport. 

That love knows how to fight fiercely when caught. 

It is an offence to keep love as a pet or put it on the market. 

That it’s an offence means someone, somewhere, has done it. 

Katherine Venn was born in London and grew up somewhere between there, the United States, Liverpool and Kent, and has recently moved to south Devon. She studied the poetry strand of UEA’s Creative Writing MA and has been published in Magma, Popshot, Third Way, Caught by the River, London Grip, Dappled Things, Theology, Under the Radar and Poetry Salzburg. Until recently she worked in publishing, and remains convinced that Elizabeth Bishop’s wasps’ nest is the perfect metaphor for making things with words. Twitter: @womensyear