Obtuse and Furry

Christina Rossetti’s description in “Goblin Market” of a wombat

They wrote and traded poems on wombats.
Christina Rossetti’s brother Dante also drew wombats—
splendiferously rotund wombats,

admired for their patience, well-mannered wombats,
amenable to being scratched, itchy wombats.
A Victorian obsession with wombats,

though only one of their crowd of wombat
fans ever went to Australia where wombats
live. Thomas Woolner never mentioned wombats

in his letters home, sent with stamps of wombats. 
Dante spent hours with Regents Park Zoo wombats,
traveled to the Paris zoo for rare hairy-nosed wombats.

While in drug rehab in Scotland, Dante had a wombat 
sent to his London home, yearned to clasp my wombat,
which slept at dinner in a wombat-

sized dining table centerpiece and left wombat
droppings—strangely cubic, the shit of wombats—
on the carpets. Christina built it an Italianate wombat 

shrine. But Dante’s had mange, common in wombats, 
was listless, fell ill. Dante got another wombat;
it died also. Dante stuffed the wombat,

put in the front hall, to greet visitors, a butler-wombat.
His self-portrait with dead wombat 
shows him weeping. He sketched a wombat

behind William Morris’s wife, Jane. She holds a wombat
leash and, like the wombat, 
wears a halo. Jane, mistress of Dante; some say the wombat

Dante depicts is William whom Jane disdained, wombat-
like, obtuse and furry, fated to be badly mated wombat,
misused by Dante, like the wild wombats.

SUSANA H. CASE

Susana H. Case is the author of seven books of poetry, most recently Dead Shark on the N Train (Broadstone Books, 2020), which won a Pinnacle Book Award and an NYC Big Book Distinguished Favorite. Case is a Professor and Program Coordinator at the New York Institute of Technology in New York City. For more information, please visit her website.