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The girl in this poem does not love you She’s just a girl, after all one syllable, four letters barely a phoneme, she’s just a noun, common as a lettuce or a paperclip. The woman who wrote it on the other hand is a wreath of bones and blood wrapped round a disobedient heart (a heart…
— In honour of World Poetry Day We are on the way to the meeting when one of the poets calls and asks us to pick up beer on the way. Although we are on the phone for a while (the fields of the Lockyer Valley flashing past us, fading into darkness as we pass)…
I don’t know why I remember that argument with my mother so precisely. We have fought many times, over the years, with increasing frequency. I keep waiting for things to ease off. To reach that moment I have heard about when she sees me as a woman, and I see her as one. When we…
Some afternoons I would sit on the back deck and do nothing for so long that the light would fall out of the world. There is a moment, unfixable, between day and night, when you still believe you can see the wrens darting about. But then the light is truly gone, and you aren’t sure whether…
Over the weeks leading up to my mother’s death, I went out into the orchard each night and trained myself to see in the dark. This was at her insistence. A training I at first refused. Initially, the only things I could see were shadows. I navigated by scent and memory. This is the lemon tree; here the orange;…
It was 1955, and she was twenty-three, living in Sydney and selling dresses in a department store. She had realised that she didn’t have the money to finish her medical training, and, after a year working in various hospitals, that she didn’t want to be a nurse. Nevertheless, she was bored with selling dresses; she…
Ten generations ago the queen entered the earth. And each generation has had its drummer. Wee Whittler is ours. Small and dark and sombre, she sits cross-legged on top of the mound, at dawn and at dusk, and patters and pounds the world into waking. Into sleep. When I was a child I would go with the…
Kay was one of those they’d Banished. Like prisoners in the old days, or the mad or the homeless, the Banished were as good as dead. In the eyes of the law, anyhow. They had no right to roof or food or love, no right to speak (in public or in private places), no right to…
Today’s guest post brought to you by the beautiful, and talented, Rebecca Jessen. As some of you know, Bec is very dear to me, so I won’t rave on about her talents as a writer, at the risk of appearing prejudiced. BUT, she’s an impressively alert, attentive and tender writer. After you’ve read this small…
— for B– It’s true what they say; that you’re too young for me. And so I’ve decided to stop here, at the age I am, and wait for you. Later tonight, while you’re sleeping, I will walk into the forest near our home, and find a shaded grove with a tree whose topmost branches…