Poem
Claire Potter
Three Black Oranges
Three Black Oranges
Three Black Oranges
Snow tracks filled with nightfall, strangehow ice so quickly erodes
leather soles, flying foxes, imported oranges
Part of the frozen river; against the hull meaning
dips: Bukowski turns
to Oedipus
via Prokofiev & pens footnotes
to his father’s reckless semen
writes how he wishes his I
had never been born, his trick that he’d
been stuck with
Three black oranges
cradled in park snow, flaccid as liver
croak with the muscularity of
an oboe when
I crush them with a stick
Spilling out of my pockets
envelopes distributed like dull frosted pea-
nuts – In the parking lot
I pass a bevy of disembowelled post boxes
drinking turps &
begging me
for the hiss of a letter
there only remains to say since writing
has become impossible:
hooked fish think of water
only as well as they can
your invisible calm
balances fruitfully a circle of dampening stones.
© 2006, Claire Potter
From: In front of a comma
Publisher: Poet\'s Union, Sydney
From: In front of a comma
Publisher: Poet\'s Union, Sydney
The poem ‘Three Black Oranges’ was inspired by Charles Bukowski’s poem ‘Three Oranges’ and Robert Adamson’s book Black Water: Approaching Zukofsky. The poem is for Robert Adamson.
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Three Black Oranges
Snow tracks filled with nightfall, strangehow ice so quickly erodes
leather soles, flying foxes, imported oranges
Part of the frozen river; against the hull meaning
dips: Bukowski turns
to Oedipus
via Prokofiev & pens footnotes
to his father’s reckless semen
writes how he wishes his I
had never been born, his trick that he’d
been stuck with
Three black oranges
cradled in park snow, flaccid as liver
croak with the muscularity of
an oboe when
I crush them with a stick
Spilling out of my pockets
envelopes distributed like dull frosted pea-
nuts – In the parking lot
I pass a bevy of disembowelled post boxes
drinking turps &
begging me
for the hiss of a letter
there only remains to say since writing
has become impossible:
hooked fish think of water
only as well as they can
your invisible calm
balances fruitfully a circle of dampening stones.
From: In front of a comma
The poem ‘Three Black Oranges’ was inspired by Charles Bukowski’s poem ‘Three Oranges’ and Robert Adamson’s book Black Water: Approaching Zukofsky. The poem is for Robert Adamson.
Three Black Oranges
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