Teesta Review: A Journal of Poetry, Volume 5, Number 2. November 2022. ISSN: 2581-7094
If
at the wrong hour
the street turns out its pockets
kings or cowards will be
named. There’s ever
an argument to talk your way
down from, playing late on the radio.
A forgetful city is always becoming, making
how we arrive:
leaky packages, tricks
on paper, long afternoons
by sparkling water –
the theorem behind obsidian
and mirror.
(First published in The Weekend Australian, 18-9 July 2015)
Jolt
Men’s heads pull them
through this suburb like fists,
their trolleys missed and lately collected.
Skin is not equipment
in this shaking off
of targets. Living is all
you digress for:
your heart tuned to the plane’s
engine, the slide of air
plateauing at speed,
in what seems certain, blank
and endless – the countenance
of our hostesses.
(First published in Island, no. 155, December 2018)