You are the fold my scarf makes when it falls

You are the fold
my scarf makes
when it falls
across the chair
as I undress. My pulse

was a string your voice
picked. I bared
my throat. You exposed
a voice. I knitted
a shield. You are gone.

But crimson holds
a fold on a chair
as warm as the winter
thread that I wove.
Now a quaver

sustains the taut
thing of this voice when
soft on my throat
is the paw
of your leaving.


Anne Elvey (Victoria)

Funeral day

The register in the gullet is a fist. Held by the muscle
of unmourned things a duct aches, with the prayer's
shudder in a nook of the bone. In the gloved cup

the liquor is brine, and smooth as a smooth on the tongue.
The breath is as shallow as the loss is deep. Each
salt corner leaks, when the flower-seller says

thousands are going to that funeral. An eagle
spans the intersection of Swanston and Flinders. The fist
unclenches in its felt. Feathers are the clocks' hands.


Anne Elvey (Victoria)