Erasure
in the stagnant silence between sips of gin,
stunted syllables sit on our lips like
battery acid and dissolve our skin.
so instead we’ll pour our thoughts into that which can’t reply;
into the night sky curling back against the rising sun,
arching her spine as the day unfurls its soul.
we’ll listen to the drag of the ocean,
seduced by a masked moon,
and wonder if waves could wash our words
away into one clean hum.
we’ll let the unsaid float
on ripples of light,
on the echo of a gull’s cry,
on the clouds dipped in violet dye
and then stand by as
one
by
one
those sentences sink.
i’ve resolved to speak to her in unsent messages,
strings of sound that refuse formation
and hover on hold.
by Nicole Gibbons
only we remember
I think about the fall
of split-sky obelisks,
serapeum sultry with incense
boats sun-drowned and lotus-heavy
shards of the earthen pastoral,
the ruins of the mundane where
the child clutches his bird-amulet and
the women sing in the reeds
the past is a foreign country
remembered only in cipher,
set in rosetta
its indigenous ghosts linger
once-present and twice-lost
I think about what will be left
of us, remembered in
moon-bellied sunsets and
goosefeather on the lake
sharp-slick cities and
forever folded in frogspawn
loved in poetry, not in prose
I cannot conjure your smile, but
you smile anyway
now
god-kings lie silent in the valley
the sundial tells no time
the age of civilisation fades
and only we remember
so I think about the fall
the gentle frenzied fall
in love.
by Charlotte Lai
