My reflection is under threat like a bilby or a platypus. Sightings are getting rarer. In photos there’s a me I don’t remember with long legs and short shorts and shoes without socks before the spiders came and spun blue webs around my calves in thickly knotted thread Back then I dyed my hair (even … Continue reading My Reflection
My dark mood reflected in the day gentle currawongs mourn with the crying rain crows pull at the sodden carcase a road-kill rabbit stretched and grey. Gentle currawongs mourn. With the crying rain a background rhythm. Insistent drums. Road-kill rabbit stretched and grey like the dull road and the castigated sky. A background rhythm. Insistent … Continue reading Weather Vane
it's not a dream on a cliff path standing tall & tense the slip of gravel its pinging fall to that darkness out of sight to all except closed eyes why am i here? like all dreams it's just an arrival, walking through a loophole I never remember like all dreams here is not a … Continue reading On Edge
Further to John Malone’s post “True Colours: the Story behind No Sympathy…”
The guy I knew didn’t commit murder. But sometimes I wonder what’s worse.
In the office his generous laughter, round and round and round it went infectious as violence. I liked him as much as anybody who saw his door that day the blue and white police tape. And the loss of his name. Tap tap tap the guard and him down a corridor. Did he ever picture fitting himself onto one of those narrow prison cots? Tap tap tap. Online everybody is anonymous. He thought he was meeting a teenage daughter of somebody slouching against suburban concrete waiting with his backpack of inappropriate dreams. This day the net is sprung, complete with those uniforms standing crisp in the sun. BANG Doors slam shut. Hundreds. BANG Thousands. BANG Office. Cell. And all those hearts. crack, BANG In the office we went back to our computers. Tap tap tap. A silence… round and round and round it went.
https://experimentsinfiction.com/2021/02/24/eif-nature-poetry-challenge-the-results/ Very excited to have been chosen to feature in this week's Experiments in Fiction Poetry Challenge. Thank you to Ingrid and Misky of Plumb-Lines and to the other great poets featured here. Please go and have a look.
Photos for Fandango's One Word Challenge - Bark Sorry. I know it's meant to be writing but... I'm tired.
An angled column of sun selects the courtyard as its resting place, quivering in among a dapple of leaves and students and lushing out the thick green lawn. She stands right in the centre, separate and anointed, her hair fairly aflame with light, her green shirt matching the grass, still and upright. He calls her … Continue reading The Reunion
a child's stubby pointer crest of sand beneath the nails reaching stroking soft as mango flesh but putri malu is coy her feathered leaf recoils tight as a fist and the tiny flower maid curtsies apologetically on the beach the softest wave curls greenly under hunching and afraid the warm ocean breeze whispers "too shy. … Continue reading Shy Princess
After John Malone’s “Snail” and after Beth’s “Slowing Down”
a snail on our window escaping from the rain with translucent antennae backlit and aglow the slow dart of that sluggish tapered foot they are much warred upon these softly creatures and their infamous slime but with no hands and just one foot at least it's hard to be inept.
One day Dad went out and got us a puppy. She was small and wide and very wiggly. Dad was told that she was a cattledog cross kelpie. But as she grew (or failed to grow) we deduced that the kelpie was something much more like a corgie. I can't quite remember why but we … Continue reading ‘Snitch’ – a portrait
