Sunday, September 25, 2022

New Poetry by Caroline Reid










After Normanville

in baking January
our skin sweats
maraschino cherries

traces of last year drip
from creases
of tired vocal folds

a squawking flock
of sulphur-crested
cockatoos sail in

batter the air, land
on salmon gums
mollusc tongues carving

syllables out of blue
blue sky
time draws light long

and peachy-blush as if
time is having an affair
with the soft slumbering hills

of the headland and
the world is not turning
a darker axis

little blue wren
in the crackling garden
red-breasted robin

in the knocking pines, why
is coming back from a place
so like never having gone


- © Caroline Reid 2022


Caroline Reid is a plural poet who has twice represented South Australia in the Australian Poetry Slam. She recorded her debut collection SIARAD (ES-press 2020) as an audiobook, adapted it for stage and performs it as a spoken word show, most recently at the Red Dirt Poetry Festival in Alice Springs. Caroline collaborates with film-makers to make video poems which have screened in international festivals. She won the 2021 Mslexia International Poetry Prize for Women.

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