States of Poetry Series Three

Adlubescence, n. Pleasure,
delight
           1.    April day in Canberra, fog in the morning
                  lifts, sunshine, moon
              &nb ...

I set out one morning to return a book and five years later I have not returned; face
pressed into the dirty skin of the Earth. In the bushes I stare from scrubby branches skin
angry with red rashes trace paths travelled. I remember two of the things I left behind –
a copy of The Brothers Karamazov and a poem I wrote in Mexico. Tears catch in my eyes
at sunset ...

Miranda Lello is a Canberra poet and performer whose début poetry collection, A Song, The World To Come, was published in March 2017 by Recent Work Press. It took thirty-five years to write, and Miranda launche ...

we write small poems
make pots that shatter –
if not in fire then falling
from careless hands –

all this to make sense of
the random moments
parading past our hearts
in chaos. instead

we should write poems
make pots that shatter –
if not in fire then falling
from careless hands –

< ...

             (first stanza after Rosemary Dobson’s Over the Frontier)

The pot I imagine
is always better
than the one
                I make.

But after all these years
my hands are learning
how to work cla ...

1        They know the subtler shades of green and where each one belongs;
2        and some reds:
          ochre, orange and something aching towards crimson –
          all in a single patch;
3      &nb ...

The gentle hills north of Taralga
unfold as though

everything were possible. Trees
grow. Their crowns shift in the small wind

showing off new leaf tips: pink, green, a hint
of blue. The cows in the paddocks are big

and brown. They browse and stare
into space. One lays her head on her friend’s

shoulder. Their calves lollop around
getting ...

Five ducks are standing
on a narrow strip of concrete

designed to ease boats into the water.
They have their backs to me;

even so, at the sound of my steps,
they slide into the lake.

A moorhen rises up and
onto the concrete.

She raises the dark wedge of her tail
and shits a neat soft gleaming pile

then steps towards me
small ...