Young Writers Society

Awyeah bruvs.

01

The fine lines that colour my skin have long since sunk in
and I am a partial print of another time
repeating against itself every moment I move.
I say this because (there are more reasons besides but this is key).
Fabric wearies but I cannot fade.
Lightning sparks cluster on my hips, beneath my belly,
kinetic energy trying to escape.
The pattern seeps again and again
trying to breathe.

02

Six weeks into tomorrow and i start to think
you might not be coming back.
This isn't a problem, there's no light in my window,
but the backdoor still squeals and seven of ten
lightbulbs flicker in the dark dusk.

It means something that light isn't a given.
We wake into a silence given by the dark bleeding into morning,
and both settle their long limbs across the sky
as though stretching before an eternal battle -
or before that marathon run between this year and the next
that continues every year afterward,
and the stars continue to be wary after their uncompromise
(what is death to light that lives so far from here).
- what rages between them is sullen and brilliant,
waking the moments inside our moments until
yes until
consciousness.

i'm starting to think you might not come back
and the long limbs crossing my verandah
are shadows of a cat we didn't own,
purring for a master it didn't have,
and I wonder where we will meet,
that consciousness and me
in the tomorrows we haven't yet sown.

03

Midnight madness, the crooner's swoon,
setting up shop in the bend of my elbows,
the slick folded rows of my date's discarded napkins.
I can hear it coming with train loudness,
pressurising the marrow of my bones
until I am too heavy to live inside.

the aches begin until three a.m.
when the crosshatch backs we bare are sudden
and exposed in thick pub light, stained glass
with cold relief. That's the way to live,
it's what we tell you, no one ever knows how
to press their lips together in the warmth,
all there is are seeping slices and the bluegasp
of one too few breaths sinking into your mouth.

I suppose what I'm trying to say is that it lives
inside me and everyone else, like a stretch of shadow,
it only comes out for the midnight croon,
one last gasp before the day is done,
one last gasp.

04

I struggle to hold on to clawed reasoning



When Icarus flew too close to the sun
some time before I became who I am
the undeniable truth became something else



Trepidation.

05

Among the tried and true
are tears that leave rends
in your second best pair of stockings,
no nail polish can fix that now.

And his mouth was wide, friendly,
when he smiled the world smiled with,
and cliches stuck with him
until suddenly his light was your own.

And didn't your mother warn you?
Everything you've ever been is better
than whatever this boy could give you,
and still

mouth wide and palm held up
you wandered from the forgotten path
straight onto that highway,
dodging the sullen roadkill.

And it spoke to you, flat out with eyes to god,
you paused and paused and pau --
three pairs down and your knees don't know skinned,
they know scab and blood and pavement

Still clustered in the marrow of you,
that thing your mother said one night you weren't up,
how men will always leave you, and the lie you tell at night,
when everything stops seeming alright.

There are truths that hold in the morning
as well as they do at midnight.
They are as unkind as they are permanent,
lending sunburn to the melanoma
and you wait til it burns
and then a little more.

I am frustratingly behind now.

06

Archaeologists have finally taken me apart,
my cavities as useful as burnt grain.
They will bury me quietly,
the rough hewn stone will jut outward:
Broken Woman #48 in lot #3 -
there are so many of us, hundreds
lying inert.
I look inside myself with their eyes
and see the malnourished soul,
marrow already carrion carved
and ready to stew.
I don't blame the scientific mind
for abject neglect when my knees knock,
when my hemp skin curls too tight on my shoulders.
I blame the tight, bright sky
whose promise seemed so much more
than all the rest.

07

The walls cry sometimes,
I hear the echo in my inner ear,
sharp and lingering in the tiny bones
of my cochlear, breaking and smashing these lines
and -- what is an echo?
A repetition of a repetition inside me
and when the sound stops your mouth
hands itself away. The cool blue paintchips falling
from under your bloodied nails,
and it's just as well,
the only voice I can handle is my own
echo echo inside.

08

My life is the stone floor falling stars smash against,
were fireworks to ignite their fire would dim in my shade.
I cultivated this on the eve of some tragedy
(perhaps a hair out of place, or a ball ignored,
or the devestation of understanding)
and how it has grown, cobbled stones multiplying
as nature intended, upward and outward
and so I can see across the world
where the ships hang suspended
over the edge of the universe,
because everyone knows the world is flat,
and so is mine now time has stopped.

09 How the Story Goes

Selkies unwrap themselves on the furthermost shore
with tentative slices from collarbone to toes,
this is not the first time but every time is the first
when the slick waves recede and all that is left is flesh.

The naked writhe of standing, walking, being, is sudden,
here the sea is sharp and lingering inside their bones,
inside the cartilage of their knees, their nose, tantalising.

Across the sandbank the men clamour to meet the myths
who have become truths, their grasping digits sanded raw.
Rare pelts are snagged and wrapped and stolen
and the shark cries die in selkie throats; there's love there.

In the sea the bulls roar and cling to silken foams,
their skins are coats in the moment of change,
heavy on their shoulders and dragging the shore,
where there is no one to meet them.

10
Can you tell the future?
Be as I am, unravel yourself to find the ends
and then murder them.
If you do not know the beginning
you cannot know the end
and if we are the shell shocked ghosts
of the generation generation before
we best not know it.
Unravel your past and end it,
the future asks for time and nothing else.

#11 Edit of An '07 Poam

when life is good it repeats itself.
so in summer you ask the question;
what can I do about the things I do?

here where the grey gums cry
the grasslands stream over reams of overturned land,
tumble into ochre, into invisible waters, into too blue skies.
but this is the thick heat of summer and all i see is grey
skeletal hands reaching for the promising sun,
just days from dry, from drought, from ruin.

and wait while I say - stay.

#12

it is the ache of a wasted tuesday.
you dont care the date but it reverbs
into the corners of your life, one more
thing that you forgot to do;
move the calendar, buy more milk,
wash the sheets, shower
and finally sleep is just too far away
to list.

#13

my sadness threatens to break through me
and spill haphazard to the oily floor.
there are words that surround such acts
but they move with stealth so my ear cannot hear.
instead i am a cloistered nun and my home
a thick rendered brick house.
i could live here were my body not thin straw
still breaking from its stalk
but it is and my mouth moves as my body does,
away from that which tempts me and so suddenly
my sadness lies beneath me on the floor
staining my bones clear through.

#14

I write songs of wild spinnifex crouching
between the trees, this hard rock earth echoing
along my bluered veins. Ochre lines burst
one moment to the next, coughing
the dust storm hack. You remember
the second the stalk hit tall and sharp
against your thighs,
and that's the song I wail into the clay,
summer walkers and knee high slashes,
this Australia stays with you
even while it dies.