Tracy Ryan
Tracy Ryan is a Western Australian novelist and poet. She won the 2009 Peter Porter Poetry Prize. Her most recent collection is The Water Bearer (2018).
This time aroundthey say, we won’tbe at loggerheads,
we’ve understoodyou can’t measure up,we’ll do maths & spelling
and that’s enough,afternoons, we’ll makecake, play in the yard,
there’s only so muchyou can ask of your child;yourself.
This time aroundwe’ll know what we loston the swings we gained
on the wild roundaboutof this pestilencewhere no one gets out
till the whol ... (read more)
Just knowing those colours makes it saferalready and how they'll change anyway by the timeyou, thirteen now, are old enough for elsewhere:
RED ORANGE YELLOW GREEN but not about weatherexcept for extremity and those are most finiteand fickle, cyclones though murderous rarely durable
as human cruelty. Where are you going?the site prompts but you choose Browse countriesthen List all countries, then ... (read more)
... (read more)
To be alone in the wide room in the house’s crooked elbow, turning point for extensions as the family grew and grew – and grew – to be alone in the one room nobody needed now, though it might be resumed like land, for guests or blow-ins, at any moment, without notice (and that was part of the appeal, the very tenuous feel of the place) to play there at five or six: to be immersed though not ... (read more)
... (read more)