The world is breaking driving through the falling dark somewhere bombs are fallingand I want to show you where I came from point to the purple hills and the darkening trees the night condensing on the fields But you are sleeping, or pretending to
The world is breakingI would like to say that once this ringed in valley was all the world and cupped me in its hand asI conversed with blades of grass ... (read more)
Miranda Lello
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 launched it on her birthday under a tree outside the National Film and Sound Archive, one of the places she loves most in Canberra. Miranda has performed regularly around Canberra over the past twelve years, including at The Salt Room, Canberra Slambouree, BAD!SLAM!NO!BISCUIT!, and at Smith’s Alternative. In 2011 she was a finalist in the National Poetry Slam. She has been a featured performer at the Noted Festival and has had multiple poems shortlisted for the University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor’s International Poetry Prize. She has had poems published in Axon: Creative Explorations, fourW, and the now long-gone Canberra journals Block and Burley.
I swim through obscure water to the far bank where trees hunch searching reflections in muddy currents
I crawl beneath greening branches beside dark bracken spiky cycads stare out at the people on the other side
They lie spread on sparsely grassed sand congregated by this inland river beneath incongruous beach umbrellas
They stumble through shallows on hidden rocks swim to the middle where lazy ... (read more)
As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster.Henry Hill, Goodfellas
I am in a Martin Scorsese film – except I’m notIn 1972 I was in a bar with my gangster friends having my gangster laughs and we wereKings among men – ‘You’re a funny guy!’I shouted we shouted guns sleeping restlesslyin pockets on belts in the top drawer by the bed
But then little Marty, who maybe w ... (read more)
(after William Shakespeare, Richard III Act 1, Scene 1)
this winter of our discontentdead leaves scutter on roadssad! no one is sadder than me
the sun reports winter as summer – fake news!winds carry chill of snow
I won some victoriesmade crowns of branchesbruised arms stripped bare
fool trees ask the sky for carestupid! sad! grab what you wantwhen you cannot prove a lover
fake news! you ha ... (read more)
Adlubescence, n. Pleasure, delight 1. April day in Canberra, fog in the morning lifts, sunshine, moon waxes white and clear in the eveni ... (read more)
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 eyesat sunset and I bow my head to the night and h ... (read more)