Angela Gardner
A Lurid Tale
A lurid tale my Lord
and upon the tenderest flesh.
It is on everyone’s lips.
Yet when he came to it
one of the sailors realised
he just couldn’t stomach it.
But such a juicy story
of the captain and the mate
every newspaper relishing
sinking their teeth in the meat
of such a scandal.
To his customers and neighbours, he remains Cannibal Tom. He is
notorious, known but never known. His fresh start, his survivor’s story. In
compression and exhalation, the sunshine turns the streets to air and
water, to the various blues that are never enough. Here, on the harbour,
Sydney Harbour, Tom Dudley is a family man, at home in flat acres of
briny light that shines on Cambridge Street and Sussex Street, both named
for the old country (as if he had never left).
Taken from The Sorry Tale of the Mignonette
(Shearsman Books 2021), was longlisted for the
Live Canon International Poetry Prize
and first published in the Live Canon 2019 Anthology (UK).
