dream #23

I find a fine boned China

boy beside a limestone lined convoy

of metal men with metal

hearts and metal cars with metal parts

Elise

what fine whispers

whip right through you

when you wait

for night

View from the Train (of a Cold Night)

boo blue houses
hoot like little owls as we
swoop through their
streets

breathing little foggy breaths and
bleating little lamb bleats while the
cold heaps up around
them

I would wave
if I was little

I would wave
and smile

but now
the black-clad passengers on my carriage
would flap their papers
and frown

Donnie #2

We brought him pencils and paper and books

placed them with reverence inside his old briefcase

(the one mum said smelt like the city)

delivered them to him in the hope of prompting

watched those bony, once-dexterous fingers

feel through the contents like a learning child

take a texta

and draw a terrifying picture

of the Queen Mother

with a moustache

Donnie

We referred to our memory of you like an abstract
dictionary
a vapourous tome floating in the backs of our
brains

text mixed with pictures

we flicked through the fixtures of your former
voice
your former
face
your former
thoughts
and ways of expressing
them

this was our way of guessing what you
wanted

this was our way of preparing for your
death

Reception

you

made

a

myth

out

of

me

I move through

cloaked in the long blue cloak my
mumma gave me last
November
and now those Summer embers have come to choke on
Autumn
I am automatically open to being
closed.

My Niece Sleeps

my niece sleeps
tangled in hair and
dreams
imp spirit bottled in a
cream baby
cheeks flushed with
heat
sweet sweat-matted head paused mid-
motion
she seems moored mid some strange
ocean
she seems suspended in some kind of there-less
air
some kind of somewhere
nowhere

Gareth

Pulled into the dark smoke of his voice, his
stories, the pinched flicker of his beautiful
battered cheek, sometimes the voice drags,
sometimes it clanks, sometimes it's hard to hear
it speak, sometimes it swims so smoothly to the
surface of the room, gliding, angelic, through
the ears and the heads up to the roof where it
swoops, circles, hovers like breath, then descends
so slowly, softly, deathly still, a smokey trill
in a burning bush, then the air clears, the wood
creaks, and you are felled with one big push.

Untitled #20

he plays me

ukelele

after the sun

has passed

I Can Smell That Dawn

I can smell that dawn

hear it yawning through the trees as though the
morning broke it from a deep deep sleep, woke it
from a sweet sweet fleeting memory, a far retreat
into some fantasy, a place that won't come back

I can feel that lack
I can feel that mourn

just as clearly as I hear that wake and smell that dawn

Sam

Sam Shepard was so

beautiful!

we sigh

That photo of him biting

her arm!

His beautiful face!

The tragic glow of his wise young-man's

eyes!

The cut of his jaw!

His golden hair! (at least it

looks like it might be golden in these black and

whites)

Oh Sam!

we sigh



He's so sharp and steely now

though

she says

The last photo I saw of him

He looked like a dark

farmer

Staring into a distant

oblivion

the first thought this morning

my

self

is

memory

When We Reconnected

when we reconnected the earth was growing
cold, the

chill was settling in your
hair, there

were regular
rainstorms, everywhere

was
wet, the

streetlights that had streamed with hot regret were fogged into a
freeze, the

breezes were slap-sharp harpies with stinging hands and
yet, the

mornings we woke
together, the

mornings we opened our eyes to the light
together, the

weather was warm

and bright