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.