JOAN FLEMING
Housesit in spring
They fuck in the borrowed fire-
bath, luck a kind of furniture of heat that floats them
while the day’s last shudder of light inks the snow–strange mountain ridge
mauve and midnight
blue
as a love-bruise but still so white, stark
against the dun and dark they can still see
in the valley
bath, luck a kind of furniture of heat that floats them
while the day’s last shudder of light inks the snow–strange mountain ridge
mauve and midnight
blue
as a love-bruise but still so white, stark
against the dun and dark they can still see
in the valley
In the morning he bares for her
beside the painter’s double mantle
The heat is inside now
like a sun on snow that thins it into liquid and lifts it
so
beside the painter’s double mantle
The heat is inside now
like a sun on snow that thins it into liquid and lifts it
so
In the night they sleep a little listen
to the wind singing through the chimney listen to its blameless
whistle to the glass pane loud in its distress a little like music
yes
and the valley outside in its dark past life is just a thought
(or less)
to the wind singing through the chimney listen to its blameless
whistle to the glass pane loud in its distress a little like music
yes
and the valley outside in its dark past life is just a thought
(or less)
He thinks of shadows circling a face and how to capture it
with film and the white keys and the black keys and the other half
of him whispering into her knees
He doesn’t toss can make himself a stone
for thinking
with film and the white keys and the black keys and the other half
of him whispering into her knees
He doesn’t toss can make himself a stone
for thinking
And she is in another place travelling through fragments of stories
in the deep
finds she can sleep
through singing
in the deep
finds she can sleep
through singing
What they don’t know about each other is getting less
they tell their catalogue of
failed love stories
Who would you have me fight? she says
The one who said to call and had her other man pick up the phone
who said in five years’ time you’d still be doing
what you’re doing now
who said your world was smaller
than she originally thought
who pulled it down
in talk
they tell their catalogue of
failed love stories
Who would you have me fight? she says
The one who said to call and had her other man pick up the phone
who said in five years’ time you’d still be doing
what you’re doing now
who said your world was smaller
than she originally thought
who pulled it down
in talk
The one who said he couldn’t believe in love
though the night was warm a February a balcony so thick with smoke
from their own mouths it hurt to blink
who said the word (love)
til his lip curled pink and woke your friend
whose house you were breaking into
pieces outside of
though the night was warm a February a balcony so thick with smoke
from their own mouths it hurt to blink
who said the word (love)
til his lip curled pink and woke your friend
whose house you were breaking into
pieces outside of
The one who stopped speaking he was low as carpet
in the basement bedroom couldn’t drive you when a speck of metal
blew into your iris
and wouldn’t wash free
so you took the bus the bit of it, stuck, like a splinter in your colour
and already starting to rust
in the basement bedroom couldn’t drive you when a speck of metal
blew into your iris
and wouldn’t wash free
so you took the bus the bit of it, stuck, like a splinter in your colour
and already starting to rust
A who for every dead sparrow on a painted fence
on the painter’s wall in the borrowed house
each in all its hook–hung softness and sprawl
the painted feathers so real once you could have
touched them all
on the painter’s wall in the borrowed house
each in all its hook–hung softness and sprawl
the painted feathers so real once you could have
touched them all
By Sunday, she bends right over
a woman in charcoal
a woman in gouache
a woman with no clothes on against the weather a woman clothed
in luck Those mouths that had eaten us, she says
open up again in paint in story
tell them back into the ground
a woman in charcoal
a woman in gouache
a woman with no clothes on against the weather a woman clothed
in luck Those mouths that had eaten us, she says
open up again in paint in story
tell them back into the ground
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Joan Fleming is the author of The Same as Yes (VUP, 2011). She is currently working on a collection of failed love poems, and will begin a PhD in ethnopoetics in Melbourne in 2014.