for Karen Your beauty cannot be translated, but I would fail not to try. It generates a weather no meteorology can describe. It is most like a flower, a flower with moods. An unstill life, in no need of arranging, it arranges itself. It is not fixed, so how can I fix it? It doesn’t … Continue reading
Last Letter That night, your final night alive, I turned from your locked red door still holding your letter, a thunderbolt that could not earth itself. Shock remade my brains, and the prevalent devils of ill-love added to the huddle of riddles that failed to divulge their unhappy import— was that your plan? Dellarobbia, my … Continue reading
A pervasive hum, invasive lights, white gown swooping hairy legs, a skinny ghost whose nest-like-head buzzes with static and stinks of cigarettes; a woman afraid to be sent home convinced that death is imminent, and from a key locked room a wail ascends the air to crest the brutal surface of sedation. While I drink … Continue reading
Fifteen thousand years I have slumbered In my icy casket, a hoary Princess waiting Not to be kissed, but punctured By the pick of a prying scientist. My blood, dark as a fairy tale Leached insidiously into the Siberian snow, And my flesh flared red and fresh Enough to eat. My lower limbs devoured By … Continue reading
Michele Seminara is a poet and yoga teacher from Sydney. She studied English Literature at The University of Sydney and then spent many years travelling, studying and teaching yoga and meditation, and raising her family. In the last few years she has returned to her writing and discovered that, much to her surprise, she is … Continue reading
For Anne You are the dance I prayed for, my love, and I am the prayer That danced you free. I am the supper You earned, Beloved, dancing All of time down to its knees. You are The forest in my blood and the wildness In my woods, in my leaves. And … Continue reading
So why is it when I wake beside this Cornish sea, my tongue Is as tired as it only gets to be, lost in deep, Prolonged and riotous discourse with thee? My sleep Has been as eloquent, it seems, as the breeze that trafficked my window all night, As busy as the sea at her … Continue reading
Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew. —Jack Gilbert, “Failing and Flying” Like some nocturnal Icarus, I dream too close to heaven— I fly too close to morning— and I wake in pieces. And so I woke this Wednesday, a child disarmed in sleep and felled By the gravity of the ancient light he dawns in. … Continue reading
“Enemies— Part of a world Nobody seemed able to explain But that had to be Put up with.” —Seamus Heaney, “A Herbal” Continue reading
Two halters of rope around your neck, and two bodies jammed hard against your sides, is all it takes to hold you while he slips his blade beneath your eye. You hear the wet slide and suck as he scoops the eye out. He does the other, they roll together in the dirt. Does it … Continue reading
My father knew stone. He’d sit cross-legged at the hearth, felt cloth on knee, bent over with hammerstone, wooden punch, and bone tine, knapping at flint or chert, knapping it to knife point, sickle blade, arrowhead. I’d watch the stone give way beneath his deft blows: fine flakes splintering from face or rim. The curved … Continue reading
It’s dusk, and I’m listening to an old Indian devotional, the woman’s voice is a coil of plum honey. As the sun slips down the empty western sky, the tiles of houses are silvered in light. At some angles the sun is forked by newly budded branches. I’ve stared too long at its gold-lash pinwheel, … Continue reading
Do not judge me by my size I am almost invisible on a white page I could be mistaken for a spec of dust. Power is not in how big you are, power is in how big your actions are. Oh! The responsibilities I have Please, can’t you see my size! A barrage of words … Continue reading
Maybe she’s made a shelter from mulga branches and spinifex out on the plains somewhere. I imagine her walking from the west in grey light, barefooted, a walking stick in her right hand, a small lyre dangling at her waist. She must arrive as the clouds in the east begin to roil with the day’s … Continue reading
Once on the old port of Sunda Kelapa, Betawi cradled the East Indies spices. When tropical rain poured over her plantations of mangosteen, hibiscus, guava, nutmeg and cloves, she would surrender to the heat under her banyan tree and sleep heavily. In her youth, she bathed in the sap of pomelo rind and her nipples … Continue reading
In my hard boots I wandered into a field of thistles crushing violet weeds, bits of bricks and tiles, broken glass from a house I once knew. My mouth was wild, foaming her name. I heard my child’s moonless moaning and my house bursting into a cake of flames. After the rain, by the river-death, … Continue reading
Do not say a prayer, shed a tear, nor place a wreath on my grave, but bury me instead under a mangosteen tree once I’m stiff like lead. Once I’m dead, drip mangosteen milk, and wring the sweet white arils till its juices soak my funeral shroud. And when I die, embalm my head and … Continue reading
The gods do not make great-grandmothers like they used to. Mine reeked of damp earth, nutmeg, grew betel vine to feed her habit, chewed and spat betel-quid till her lips ochered and teeth blackened. She reeked of damp earth and nutmeg, plucked vine leaves at subuh, wrapped them into quids, chewed and spat them till … Continue reading
The dull chock of carrots, free-wheeling turmeric circles on the chopping board say I am home again. The creaking of the eaves against the retreating sky speak of cold windows, the eyelash-and-louse tobacco loose in the top-right-hand draw smells like my father’s office, half a world of time away. In the garden a lemon tree … Continue reading
At Kuranda for Oodgeroo Noonuccal When I was a girl, I won Your award for my poem: Walking Together. I didn’t know your name inscribed on the trophy I only knew Kath Walker. When I was a girl, I knew Our land belonged to Darkingjung whale people. I knew Budgewoi meant meeting of the waters. … Continue reading
Poem and Dish 