States of Poetry QLD poems
... and my mind is a washing machine filled with houses made from soil in Stalingrad, of having to detonate explosives found in trains, of stealing wheat all night long for his sister and baby ...
... (read more)My father can find
any building in unfamiliar
surroundings. I do not have this sense ...
During the war tick
your parents
tick tick
didn’t want to leave everything behind again ...
Dots twirl along my veins
At least a dozen in each arm
Blood-test confetti
from a diagnosis party ...
Maps are for memory. I see
palm trees by the forest. Their shadows
form an X at noon. I dig
using hands feet mouth, bite
against treasure – not gold but worry dolls that I spit
out like multi-coloured teeth into my palm.
'Pliny the Younger to Tacitus' by Zenobia Frost | States of Poetry QLD - Series Two
On Pompeii, 79AD
The violence of that night. I sat
notating Livy, through
the earth’s contractions.
A thin dawn-choked sky
shook chariots. The crowd rolled back
onto itself. Neptune threw up animals.
Every thing convulsed. On the shore
across, a great black cloud broke
with light. Shrieks rang out: endless
night, with gods up ...
'Distractions at Rental Inspections' by Zenobia Frost | States of Poetry QLD - Series Two
1. Toowong
A possum nestles
in the split
crook of the kitchen’s
plasterboard ceiling.
I shake my attention
back to the man who peddles
the empty front ...
It’s a town with a veggie patch
in the cop shop yard.
Outside the grocer, with shelves
of tins and faded VHS tapes,
a boy on a scooter asks,
Are you looking for wi-fi? as if
he’s bootlegged some to sell.
In the café we bemoan the goat-track
we drove in on: the Elephant Pass.
Swaying huge and daft,
the van was elephant enough< ...
Maroochydore, 1999 – After 10 Things I Hate About You
A girls’ weekend. Just me, Mum
and Blockbuster, probably fish ‘n’ chips,
surely chocolate.
Maybe I mistook the word menarche
for men-ache, watching Mum watch Heath Ledger
croon the song that she said
once lured her into marriage: ‘You’re just too good
\\ everything before was
fine \ sure \ orderly love
\ I recollect \ aisles of ex
in home-brand \ sober
\ procedural acts \ leg
by leg \ recipes for low-
fat sex \ clear-cut \ past
tense \ a lab report on
routine me-and-thems
\ but \\ oh // and then
/ emboss the date of I
and you / you effortless /
a loo ...