Gravity Issue 24 - Coral Hull

Coral Hull

The Midnight Trailer

Police Department officers were alerted to a swaying trailer in a carpark
behind a pick-up truck, it belonged to the Kings Royal Circus of Texas,
according to officer Duffy Ryan, the wind wasn’t enough to make it sway that
much, hence the trailer became the great mystery of the city of Albuquerque,
there was a man sitting in the truck that pulled the trailer, it was 120C and
he was hot and bothered, he had probably forgotten to administer air that night
for the animals, the night inside the trailer that is, outside it was past
midday, officer Ryan told the driver, “that trailer is not made to carry
anything with a heartbeat,” inside the midnight trailer they discovered three
Indian elephants and eight Alpacan lamas, one of the elephants was dead, after
dark, groups of police, animal officials, and onlookers stood in the parking
lot and tried to figure out what to do next, as the frightened animals that
were still alive continued to rock the compartment, when an elephant dies, it
feel like a wrecking ball has dropped straight through the heart, as though
this central organ has expanded to adopt the consistency of cloud, it may have
something to do with the absence that is created, there is huge stinking body
to get rid of, like you were told to move your house to the end of the street,
this giant absence aside from the body that is present, I guess people like to get rid of big corpses as soon as possible, but it is not so easy with an
elephant or a giraffe, pieces of them are rotting on the ground all across
Africa and India, in other countries they rot safely behind bars, or are bashed
with bars to perform, or die out inside the midnight trailers, this decade is
deciding their fate for them, there is sadness within the tiny death, but when
it happens to an elephant, you think that is tremendous, you think that’s it,
kneel down and rub your forehead, that is a monumentous sad death, something
monumentous has passed from the earth, or in zoos when an elephant sways you
think, something monumentous has gone psychotic, or something monumentous has
broken through its enclosure and is stamping the crowds to death in the circus
arena, the ringmaster with the whip or the cruel elephant trainer is the first
to go, the elephants eye is as big as your palm, take a look into your palm, an
eye of a captive elephant that big and insane, is something to steer clear of,
it’s like the source of an alpine stream has suddenly turned psychotic, and
that if the water fails at its source, you will go mad if you drink it, an
elephant has suffocated inside the eternal night of a circus trailer, the
valley is hurting, a mountain has been collapsed for no reason.

Coral Hull was born in Paddington, New South Wales, Australia in 1965. She spent her childhood in Liverpool, on the outer western suburbs of Sydney. Coral is a full time writer specialising in poetry, experimental prose fiction, prose poetry and literary articles. She is also the Editor of The Book of Modern Australian Animal Poems, an anthology of Australian poets writing about animals from 1900-1999. She has lectured and read poetry at various venues, festivals and conferences both in Australia and internationally. Coral has an interest in photography, performance poetry and astronomy. She is a member of The Field Naturalists Club of Victoria, The Royal Astronomical Society of Canada and The Australian Society of Authors. Her published books are; In The Dog Box Of Summer in Hot Collation, Penguin Books Australia, 1995, William's Mongrels in The Wild Life, Penguin Books Australia, 1996, Broken Land, Five Islands Press, 1997 and How Do Detectives Make Love?, Penguin Books Australia, 1998. Coral is an animal rights advocate and the Director of Animal Watch Australia, an online publishers directory and resource site on animal rights and vegetarian issues. She completed a Bachelor of Creative Arts Degree (Creative Writing Major) at the University of Wollongong in 1987, 1st Year of a Bachelor of Visual Arts Degree (Conceptual Art) at the South Australian College of Advanced Education in 1990, a Master of Arts Degree at Deakin University in 1994, and a Doctor of Creative Arts Degree (Creative Writing Major) at the University of Wollongong in 1998. Her work has been published extensively in literary magazines in the U.S.A., Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom. When she is not travelling in relation to various writing assignments, Coral lives in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia with her two dogs Binda and Kindi.