Tuesdays Paul comes by. He jogs up the driveway in his striped green shorts and I’m there at the door with Ella on my hip. She’s crying, she’s teething and drooling and crying from the pain, and some days I can’t stand it, I have to call my mother and go for a walk or a drive to the beach and watch the seagulls be ugly to each other. On Tuesdays I wait for Paul, and he always shows up ... (read more)
Bella Li
Bella Li's first book, Argosy (Vagabond Press, 2017), won the 2018 Victorian Premier's Award for Poetry and the 2018 NSW Premier's Award for Poetry. Her second book, Lost Lake (Vagabond Press, 2018), was shortlisted for the 2018 Queensland Premier's Award for Poetry.
First
That I have written, of places I have not been. To Carthage I came, where there sang around me in my ears a cauldron of unholy loves. And in the vast courts of memory, the caverns of the mind. I have heard great waves upon the shore, I have remembered what it is. In other ears: the scaling of heights. These circuits of stars, compass and pass by.
Second
That what I have seen I hav ... (read more)