Tuesday, March 17, 2020

New Poetry by Penny Gleeson











Station Pier 1955

(Drawn from the memories of the writer’s mother)

It had brittle fur
with cross-stitched eyes
and as it was cleaved open
unfurled sawdust
which floated to the floor.

Not like the camels
she saw, as the ship
sliced through the Suez,
their manes cast in the arid wind,
lips curled back
testing the direction of the desert,
their telescopic limbs
tracking the trade-winds.

Her legs still wobbled
like the waves,
as a pink-faced man
with silver-skinned buttons,
unwrapped her fingers
from a felt leg
and disembowelled it.

What are they like?
Her baba asked the one
sweeping the sawdust.
Two hundred years
behind the donkey.
His hands drove the broom
like an oar, and she wondered
whether he had seen
the camels too.


- © Penny Gleeson 2020


Penny Gleeson is a writer, researcher and lecturer. She is a graduate of Cambridge University and The University of Melbourne. Her poetry has been published in Not Very Quiet. She lives in Melbourne with her partner, cat and generations of books and plants.



1 comment:

  1. Lovely poem Penny Gleeson. So full of the makings of life.

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