Poetry

Darkness without
 

Up or down

Lying heavy in lightness

It isn’t the most beautiful town on the coast,
but I adore it: the crumbling friary said to be haunted
by the Black Nun, the stone house on a short cliff.

Bathed in sun & its fluorescent bloom, I walk
            into the narrow track along Old Taylor Road.

The strippers threw an art show at the community gallery.
Apportioning the boxed wine at the opening, we all wore
protest stickers feminists had plastered on the windows—

A mother’s prayer scents the road and charts the course.
Before the journey, impatience grows between my bones. We gather,

I rode him for years, my enemy.
That red horse fated to the back
paddock and dog food factory,

Grief of the sea,
cold lights drifting
over marble plains.

In a dialogue for freedom, a slave once
begged his owners, knees bruised by the rocks
he crawled upon. I kneel before my lover
shackled by desires. I become her slave