Just been kissed

Kate Camp

Light shines.
They open me up.

I am a watch.
They gaze at my workings

with jewellers eyes
with special eyes

they love me.

They love me with their needles and clamps.
They love me with their vinyl and tiny pillows.
They love me with their screws and little mirrors.
They love me with water and air
with their porcelain
with their precious metals.
They love me with their strong, taut hands
using my face for purchase.

This is flavoured of pineapple they say
as they shoot it into me.

And when the ladies have finished with me
and their conversation of boys and school
trips to Copenhagen is neatly packed away
and all the instruments that need to go
into the autoclave have gone to that chamber
of steam and all the debris is whirlpooled
down I am set free in the streets
victim and champion
red and rubbed lips softer than anything else
and I can’t help can’t help but touch them
as if to feel and I can’t feel as if to feel
where I have
just
been
kissed.

Kate Camp

Kate Camp’s poetry appears in HEAT Series 2.

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The finale was majestical. Dearo, dearie, the explosion was holy in its glory. All of it was gone. The whole mine, pride of the banana state, ended up looking like a big panorama of burnt chop suey. On a grand scale of course because our country is a very big story. Wonderment was the ear on the ground listening to the great murmuring ancestor, and the earth shook the bodies of those ones laying flat on the ground in the hills. Then, it was dark with smoke and dust and everything turned silent for a long time.

The kangaroo suddenly stood up, shaking the car heavily as it rose. It stood a good two metres above the bonnet and leered through a bloody eye at them, bleeding mouth open, showing enormous yellow rat teeth. Samir, Amin, Ilham and Zeen screamed and slammed back rigid in their seats. The kangaroo raised its fists and began beating wildly at the bonnet. They could feel it kicking and tearing at the radiator.

She had eyes as black and shiny as fresh grapes. Her head was shaped like an apple and her ears were shaped like a bat’s. She was so small that she could fit into the breast pocket of my leather jacket. She was Ren, my black and tan chihuahua.

Some come down from the mountains / into the searing belly of the wind, / and sit between six fires, then turn, / already blind, towards a seventh fire, / the sun.

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Every evening the man brings home his trailer / of vegetables. He bruises them rushing over the kerb. // In the house across the way a mirror waits / glowing and alone for all the lighted day.

Basket

Just been kissed

Kate Camp

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A Kind Peoplefrom Carpentaria

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