New Poetry by Vivienne Mohan

Twenty years or more it'll take

There’s a pen, a book, an apple, a
paperclip, a notepad, on my desk.
There is a tree, a water-pipe,
outside my window.
There is a small cut,
on my right temple on my face.
There is a small temple built
on my palm. Blood,
on a tissue in the bin
by my desk.
There is maths in my bed
under the covers,
taking the physical form
of a curled snake. There
is physics hurting my childhood.
Advanced formulas for motion
leaning on new bricks,
that I have sculpted.
Little x’s and flight
cover the floorboards
like thorns.
There is a larger me
in the doorway, approving
that I have my lamp on,
waiting to guide me back,
in miscellaneous memory,
so that I can work
harder this time.
I don’t want to go
to the classroom again.
Literature is somehow mixed up,
with a plot against forgetting.


- Vivienne Mohan 2018


Minibar

I complain about ridiculous things so
I can be shot down. The hotel room, I say,
is not enough like home. And home,
does not have enough open roads.

They say I’m ungrateful. With this in mind
I close my eyes and picture the breeze.
Ah yes, I say, I can feel it now. Thank-you.


- Vivienne Mohan 2018

Vivienne Mohan is a nineteen-year-old Queensland poet. She began writing in 2016 and in that same year was the runner-up of the Thomas Shapcott Poetry Competition for an unpublished first manuscript. A septet of poems by her mother, MTC Cronin, will appear in Bluepepper shortly.