Most Read... John McAuliffeBill Manhire in Conversation with John McAuliffe
(PN Review 259)
Patricia CraigVal Warner: A Reminiscence
(PN Review 259)
Joshua WeinerAn Exchange with Daniel Tiffany/Fall 2020
(PN Review 259)
Eavan BolandA Lyric Voice at Bay
(PN Review 121)
Vahni CapildeoOn Judging Prizes, & Reading More than Six Really Good Books
(PN Review 237)
Christopher MiddletonNotes on a Viking Prow
(PN Review 10)
Next Issue Between Languages, Howard Cooper 'Ur-language' Oksana Maksymchuk 'Multifarious Beast' Zinovy Zinik 'My Mother Tongue, My Fatherland' Philip Terry 'Lost Languages' Victoria Moul 'Bad Latin, Barbarous Inglishe'
Poems Articles Interviews Reports Reviews Contributors
Reader Survey
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