Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%

'Aftermath:' by Josephine Clarke | States of Poetry WA - Series Two

by
States of Poetry Western Australia - Series Two

'Aftermath:' by Josephine Clarke | States of Poetry WA - Series Two

by
States of Poetry Western Australia - Series Two

Landscape photographs from Black Saturday by John Gollings
Fremantle Arts Centre, July 2015.

enter a room and find stripes of night on each of the walls

pines have been hushed

black trunks block the light sky
and underfoot the ash is soft, waiting for wind

              there can be no name for this

letters and numbers in degrees
of requiem     so many points
of a pin     where the fire spirit chose to go

a doorway into another room where undressed,
old hills roll in wrinkles
trees like stubble
on anatomy we don’t normally see
roads like a lover’s tracings
on flanks, shoulders

camera is a word for room in another language
– this is a tender lens

how do we forget
the defence of bark
how a hill names a track
the requirement of sun for shadow

photographs on a wall

                paper
                                scissors
                                                rock

Josephine Clarke


A version of 'Aftermath' was published in Westerly’s online edition: New Creative, September 2016.

Leave a comment

If you are an ABR subscriber, you will need to sign in to post a comment.

If you have forgotten your sign in details, or if you receive an error message when trying to submit your comment, please email your comment (and the name of the article to which it relates) to ABR Comments. We will review your comment and, subject to approval, we will post it under your name.

Please note that all comments must be approved by ABR and comply with our Terms & Conditions.