How does fire hurt
wire?
It slides down
and slams its face
right up close: this island
is a heart attack, the rocks
are weeping
tears
from where they cannot come.
The throat slows down
and the words sit
for days —
the undigested bodies
of small animals.
At the border, the screaming,
the quiet,
none can find who they love;
leave the country
without them
(the dead)
in your eyes.
But something catches them
and you turn:
what is so evocative of
human, as a hessian
bag filled with sand ...
BY MTC CRONIN
MTC Cronin has had six books of poetry published, the most recent being Talking to Neruda's Questions and Bestseller (both Vagabond Press, 2001). Another collection, My Lover's Back, is forthcoming in 2002 (UQP). She is currently working on a PhD, Poetry and Law: Discourses of the Social Heart, and has recently received an Established Writers New Work Grant from the Australia Council for the Arts. Her books are available by contacting her at: <margie_cronin@hotmail.com> or ph: (02) 9550 2918.
From Green Left Weekly, January 23, 2002.
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