Seven poems throughout the years (2021-2024)
2021
Untitled poem
At the sight of my cleft edges you gripe about your perforated ones
I get it I do
cardinal crimson coral flaming maroon vermilion swimming out the corner
we're wilted grass and I'm the soil holding us up
I get it I do.
Strawberry squid
Published in Alternate route
Sitting on a wooden stool behind the shed I was weaving a basket out of long lemon grass. Blisters on blisters, callous apon callous. Finished with my work I walked over to the edge of the sea foaming at its mouth for a friend. Slowly dipped the basket in the water into the translucent prussian slush it goes creating splashes from my shaky hands. Splashes formed into bubbles & when I glanced down at the submerged basket there was a slight tinge of a rosey glowing orb sitting blurry in the basket weighing it down like a baby. I pull it up & out of the water— a strawberry squid. I was so lucky to be the witness of her sparkling like Christmas lights appearing to be made of sheer pink iridescent metals & the eyes— like jumbo sized gumballs they were the shade of bumblebee & clay I couldn't believe what I was seeing for a moment. She had spots like a cheetah & the water drops on her skin made her glisten in the golden afternoon.
2022
Hospital visit one: a flower tells me
Published in the Augment review
Rain weighs down with a stretch. Heart monitor beeping, the bed: familiar as milk. Out the window is a pond. Green waxy leaves, snow petals of pink, spinning bioluminescent lotus—
light refracts of you like flush satin. Breakfast from the nurse rolls on my tongue like medicine I took as a sick child— I needed more medication than I thought. I am now a bathroom
tile: rubbing alcohol splattered, dust, ceramic. Molding loaf of brains dies before the body, like my mind is a parent's watch & my body is a child. My skin is a clock forming wrinkles in
time. At the hospital I'm reminded of the abused doll heads knackering together in the attic box of my childhood home, tile skin, not yet cracked. Flying lotus glowing joy, you cause
me to meditate— all those doll heads I kept secret & electric blue love I avoided for a stoney life— I promise I'll do better next time around, I will refract like flush satin.
A happy birthday
Published in Pinhole poetry
Watch his new fidget spinner like a recently discovered coppered miniature mars with three rings; red ring silver ring red ring, when rotating.
Drink lined pink moscato one
by one with smooth aviation.
Watch the parchment metal skin folds of his helium balloon— it whooshing left & right like a tortoise.
Listen with a cup on the door to the
blue flare & ivory crackle of a candle.
Watch the ice cream cake in its melange swirlings as if it were a pale-haired piñata.
Eat a strawberry bon bon & tilt your
head to the contrasting sugar &
lemon like a cat hearing a doorbell—
chime chime, for the third time.
2023
Terra nullius
Published in Mascara literary
The concrete
foreground is italicized, it lifts,
the first to die in the sun is my Pharoah,
she incarnates as a rifle—
protector of all placeholder-kind,
I send an inquiry to the Australian government
& it reads: why do I
walk away before I ask, perhaps it's true
that it's the same with death— death of skin,
death of language,
something in between life comes to be
a confused spokesperson. I enshrine my unbelonging as an
invitation, my
unbeknownst to Australasia,
despite this I'm as unfurled as a lily. My womb
rose up & the
insolvent babe dried away
two thirds of its material— I was the last to break on
a screed, damp &
pale like an English settler,
the ivory turret strayed from his castle— there are no
porcelain crowns here sir.
I aestheticise my identity
with odes to Cleopatra & my buoyant hair that curls
upward at the ends
like a beach's high noon crest—
enclosed yet open & furled in public winds.
The sewing machine
Published in Querencia press
A hook
A hypocritical curve
A copper grin of your grandma
A deceiving bait
Jiggles of rubber
Gauge the dunce gauge the mime—
I am not the hole
Defective & sinks on its own accord—
You're between yourself like a mushy strawberry
Under the needle of the sewing machine
It taunts you with a hum like your grandma's
When she sewed a hook on a human hem
Or tried on something new—
Each infant a stepping stone to almost reach
The pond of blood head first
One coat counts as skin.
2024
Thicket retrograde
Published in The Bitchin' Kitsch
SEEKING
Roll back the firs come close
as if to hug & apologize— lobster
for dinner, died alone in a tank.
You force the role of two primates:
perverted fragments. Movement
being the only artistic direction.
I pass you in traffic, you're
hunting down an orbital of life
like klonopin did to you, &
I force the roll of expiration—
there is a study: we change
& change & behave half-chewed.
SEEING
Roll up your arms & so you
called them Chinese finger traps,
paranoia as side effect to
progress. I learnt much
about people to trust them— I
know better now, don't let me
be held by its blazen bark,
impossible to walk wrapped like
a toothbrush. I know better
now than to act as homo sapien:
wisdom carved & disperses
under my nails & overbite, I
over chewed enough to split in half.
SPREADING
I paste protest posters over
my city of love so dim like a sunweak
planet— you burst into anti gravity.
You roll back your clip
after the psychologist charges your
insurance, & all you see is sacrifice.
— Dorothy