Ruth Brassington

Snail ears

I’m trying to think
of non-backboned animals
and all I see, spread-eagled,
pinned down, is hermaphrodite
earthworm and ditto snail
with its penis behind where
a right ear would be
if it had one. I hear the snickers
in that long-lost sixth-form lab,
girls agog over sexual creatures.

No-one dared tell us snails court
with hours and hours of entwined
frothy slime-making,
or that first of all comes
the violent skin-piercing
with a calcified dart shot forth
by a courting Cupid staking its claim.

Like Henry the Eighth they make
their choices, the rest just follows
like it or lump it
shelled or unshelled.