Poetry Archives | Giramondo Publishing

i’m not scared of anything / the door’s just nicer shut / and so are the windows / and the drains, taped over / but the vent’s wide open / because i cannot reach it, / so i watch it like TV and / huntsman comes right in.

Mt Gulaga becoming visible, something / ending, something beginning, the first / smoke of nightfall / thin over the canopy, / deep of it / rising steadily through the trees.

the goldfish pepsi / bumps into / her double in the / mirror glass of the tank / would she try to eat herself / for breakfast we could / play her the tape of dorian / gray

When I was young, I realised my body / was something to be held back or kept / in its place, so I have mastered the art / of observation, how to watch faces for / a frown or grimace: signs of weather.

Avoid doughnuts. Doughnuts sprinkle your lap with sugar. / Avoid, for the first day of travel, all right turns. Travel light. / Wear one of the five new sweaters you bought for the trip.

We’ve turned it into emotion – / red pickle like the night’s heat, ice creams so / smooth they enforce silence, orange- / flavoured kisses, conversations directed by rum.

Anemograms from years you can hardly remember / handed round at an evening garden party. / Empty envelopes the colour of envy, / sparkling wine and cautious laughter.

The Leech / You’re a sycophant, repugnant. Vile bacchant— / you suck and glut, fill like a slimy phial. No denial / of the claret in our veins. Fat phlebotomist, / yes, you were used to treat ailments—fevers, gout, / haemorrhoids, headaches, clots, bleeding wounds / and gums—you thrived, made doctors rich.

8) he followed me on Instagram, I followed him back / just to be kind, and he introduced himself as a physicist / building a time machine and asked if I / was interested to go back to the precolonial Tapanuli / because he had the white man’s guilt, / the Dutch person’s guilt, the coloniser’s guilt, / but also the urge / to verify if my ancestors were really man-eaters, / ‘Aren’t you at least a bit, teeny, tiny, curious?’ / he replied, ending it with a chicken leg emoji

I worked them, sharpened hooks / for high-rollers, sewing my special rigs. / Bridles for bonito, live bait that / trailed the barbed viridian in our wake.

The eyes are faulty interpreters. They pretend to know / The language but do not listen to accents / And are too confident for their own good.

Cat’s Pantoum / Cat in curve, perched on the side table / She said, holding out her hand / House cat leans forward, leaps: / A dislocation finds its moment

The literary world prefers its daytime rose, / sweet and thorny, seasonal, blown. / You open only at night, on the ledge, / stepping from your continent’s shelf / like Houdini on a tightrope, flesh tensed, / gazing in all directions at once / like Titian’s triple portrait beasts, / or your own words, pointing and warning.

Dodo / Okay, so we’re famous for all the wrong reasons, / Our ancestors shed their energy expense & settled / On Mauritius – selection did the rest & our wings / Pared back. Portuguese found us, forest dwelling.

I haven’t really seen it, Caravaggio’s / Death of…but the saint holds his neck / with his right hand, his forehead / with the left / and it really is the dumbfoundedness of mourning.

I think: the sugar’s hit the brain / when she’s finished / she slurps the rest of her tea / and says / ‘australians only believe in fark’ / ‘what?’ / ‘you know, fark – that’s all they say around here: / fark fark fark why do they have to say / that / all the time for?

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Poetry

Three Poems

At Bunga

Two Poems

from Ars Poetica

The New World and Finding It

Two Poems

Anemograms

Animal Poems

Three Poems

Two Poems

Parts of us

Four Poems

Moonflowers

Four Poems

Essay on Absence – Journal (with Judy Garland)

learning english with fatimah