Navigation

Early navigation.
Whole days spent charting shorelines,
                                                                shining sands of skin.
Mornings, I ran my hands over the hollows and dunes in my sheets,
the body’s language for this landscape of the other
                                                                             warm on my fingers.

We spoke of crossing an interior;
our speech, sure as the sun at its zenith,
                                                               threw no shadows.

Easy to navigate on autopilot.
A constant reckoning of school and car keys.
The pole star of ourselves
                          always there in the somehow of early and late.

Sailing alone again
we startled at reefs and shallows
our language listing in tropic television seas.

Co-ordinates misplaced,
you turned to tripods and binoculars,
watched from your fixed point above the riverbank.
You did not see diamonds flying from a kayak’s oar,
dogs smiling in their timeless present and skies of naked pink
                                                               disrobing in the mauve of evening.

Navigation gone,
we lived amongst gaps, my compass skewed
by ferrous fears and the lustrous pieces of your astrolabe
stolen by slate-grey days; love absent, inarticulate and spent.

Mornings, I run my hands
over the hollows and dunes of you left in our sheets,

but I am a map-maker,
I can chart this arctic dialect of loss.


Flora Smith (Western Australia)

First published in Westerly

Angry Young Girls

Sue Clennell (Western Australia)
Read by Mags Webster
From Sue's CD The Van Gogh Cafe

The Thracian

Sue Clennell (Western Australia)
Read by Mags Webster
From Sue's CD The Van Gogh Cafe

Monochrome

Dementia's tweezers pluck her apricot memories,
pop Wordsworth's daffodils like spilt beads.
X-rays expose the bullet holes
while medicos check for the calibre,
sift through the embers of a dying skull.
There is a little Halloween here,
white ants in the art deco,
you get the picture.
The dice falls like a guillotine.


Sue Clennell (Western Australia)
First published in SpeedPoets

I'm thinking French kisses...

I'm thinking French kisses     bruised tongues
stepping on diamonds in an ouch come hither frenzy
I'm thinking clink and chew the ice cubes
taste the green of onions
squeeze sunflower juice
watch trapezes on the edge of symmetry
Dare I say it?
This is love.


Sue Clennell (Western Australia)
First published by Speedpoets

Domestic

Scrubbing off your angel spit,
I untangle the snarl of lavender promises.
Although you have flown away home
with other dappled ladybirds
I preserve this apricot taste in my mouth,
grip and glimmer to false hopes,
stretch cat-like
and lick my memories.


Sue Clennell (Western Australia)
First published by Speedpoets

Babylon

Young men cry in the desert
surf waves of silver bullets,
shed mother's apple crumble
school scars     siblings' bites,
swap smoky jokes as they drift
sand-like into men.


Sue Clennell (Western Australia)
First published by Speedpoets

Marry the rain

I could marry the rain
as the breeze curvets
as the day burns down
as the grass dreams stone.

I could marry the rain
in its high heeled days
in its runes and bells
in its wishbone light.

I could marry the rain
with its love of green
with its filigree
with its eggshell shine.

I could marry the rain
match its cyclic swell
match its froggish cup
match its constancy.


Jan Napier (Western Australia)

First published in dotdotdash