Most Read... Rebecca WattsThe Cult of the Noble Amateur
(PN Review 239)
John McAuliffeBill Manhire in Conversation with John McAuliffe
(PN Review 259)
Eavan BolandA Lyric Voice at Bay
(PN Review 121)
Patricia CraigVal Warner: A Reminiscence
(PN Review 259)
Vahni CapildeoOn Judging Prizes, & Reading More than Six Really Good Books
(PN Review 237)
Tim Parksin conversation with Natalia Ginzburg
(PN Review 49)
Next Issue Hal Coase 'Ochre Pitch' Gregory Woods 'On Queerness' Kirsty Gunn 'On Risk! Carl Phillips' Galina Rymbu 'What I Haven't Written' translated by Sasha Dugdale Gabriel Josipovici 'No More Stories' Valerie Duff-Strautmann 'Anne Carson's Wrong Norma'
Poems Articles Interviews Reports Reviews Contributors
PN Review 276
PN Review Substack

This poem is taken from PN Review 181, Volume 34 Number 5, May - June 2008.

Three Poems Gregory O'Brien


A Guide to the Frogs of Fiji

We were five days into
the month of fragile things

or so the ukulele kept reminding
us. A casual strum.

The village rooster out pecking
on the far reef.

What we didn't know we read
in a guide to the frogs

of Fiji: how, in late winter,
a soft, low-pitched trilling

crosses the moonlit golfcourse;
that males of a certain age

lack spines. What to look or
listen for:

'a soft coo-coo-coo like the sound
of a two-stroke

generator', 'a rising moan
repeated, softly',
...


Searching, please wait... animated waiting image