Anne Elvey
For years we have been saying
After the reading
Return to the old case
the voice, to the leather case
shaped to a doll, the case
lined with crimson, the satin-
lined case, an unburnt
throat. Over the torso
fold the loose limbs
of the saying. Shut on itself
the wood jaw. Tilt
the slack neck. Take
the hand from under the skirt.
Tuck the cloth. Fit
to its shape the thing. Close
the quiet lid. Press
down the rusted clasps.
Anne Elvey’s first full length poetry collection Kin is due out from 5 Islands Press in April 2014. Her poems have appeared most recently in Overland, Eureka Street, Meanjin, Australian Love Poems 2013 and Best Australian Poems 2013. Anne is managing editor of Plumwood Mountain: An Australian Journal of Ecopoetry and Ecopoetics (http://plumwoodmountain.com). She lives in Melbourne, Australia, and holds honorary appointments at Monash University and University of Divinity. http://anneelvey.wordpress.com
previous page     contents     next page
For years we have been saying
For years we have been
saying that this round table in the corner
a table
you bought through The Trading Post from a deceased
estate,
with four (or was it six?)
bentwood chairs—their cane lace-
work woven into curved frames; saying
that the circle of beams laid
parallel and trimmed then smoothed and polished should be cut back
and varnished. Yesterday
in the leaked sun of blinds we drew against
a forty-degree day, I noticed where a child
contrary to instruction, pressed too hard to draw
and inscribed the dark plane.
The afternoon light picked out
meals and games—
our lives tattooed in the flesh
of trees long dead.
After the reading
Return to the old case
the voice, to the leather case
shaped to a doll, the case
lined with crimson, the satin-
lined case, an unburnt
throat. Over the torso
fold the loose limbs
of the saying. Shut on itself
the wood jaw. Tilt
the slack neck. Take
the hand from under the skirt.
Tuck the cloth. Fit
to its shape the thing. Close
the quiet lid. Press
down the rusted clasps.
Anne Elvey’s first full length poetry collection Kin is due out from 5 Islands Press in April 2014. Her poems have appeared most recently in Overland, Eureka Street, Meanjin, Australian Love Poems 2013 and Best Australian Poems 2013. Anne is managing editor of Plumwood Mountain: An Australian Journal of Ecopoetry and Ecopoetics (http://plumwoodmountain.com). She lives in Melbourne, Australia, and holds honorary appointments at Monash University and University of Divinity. http://anneelvey.wordpress.com