Poem
Jane Gibian
POEM FOR DISSOLUTION, POEM FOR DISTRACTION, POEM FOR RETROSPECTION
POEM FOR DISSOLUTION, POEM FOR DISTRACTION, POEM FOR RETROSPECTION
POEM FOR DISSOLUTION
look how the land here
warps reluctant to snap
back into the jovial rounded
figures of children’s
drawings that constitute
some collective reality despite
a paucity of evidence
here the thick air aches
with the weighted alluvium
of memory clotted like souring
milk each figure
of speech derailing her
ties to the real some tenuous
thread of rotting velvet ribbon
and apathy stuns like concussion
as we sit before the postcard-blue
horizon watching time disintegrate
with a resounding click
POEM FOR DISTRACTION
waking at this half-lit hour you lapse
into the incredulous body
of early morning, cool with languor
& stillness
there is soon
the retreat into half-dream, your
semi-permanent shell following
the journeys of waking
with gradual daring
in this striated orb
your suddenly immodest body
is drawn to another: gravitates
towards the plane of his moving
in an almost collision of the senses
such precision now in the casual
singe of skins brushing
together with devastation when
the new morning splinters
open like surrender
POEM FOR RETROSPECTION
that afternoon the past dragged
at your heels, trailing
in the wake of your footprints
and coating the door-handle
with a sticky substance
it has stroked your bony shoulders
with knowing grooved fingers,
melting into scuff marks
upon a wooden floor
this day;
when recollection
stabs like broken glass
into the palm when
your thumb is laced with mandarin,
the spacious scent ricocheting
through layers of time and
the clarity of vision
is unrelenting
© 1998, Jane Gibian
From: The Body’s Navigation
Publisher: Five Islands Press, Wollongong
From: The Body’s Navigation
Publisher: Five Islands Press, Wollongong
Poems
Poems of Jane Gibian
Close
POEM FOR DISSOLUTION, POEM FOR DISTRACTION, POEM FOR RETROSPECTION
POEM FOR DISSOLUTION
look how the land here
warps reluctant to snap
back into the jovial rounded
figures of children’s
drawings that constitute
some collective reality despite
a paucity of evidence
here the thick air aches
with the weighted alluvium
of memory clotted like souring
milk each figure
of speech derailing her
ties to the real some tenuous
thread of rotting velvet ribbon
and apathy stuns like concussion
as we sit before the postcard-blue
horizon watching time disintegrate
with a resounding click
POEM FOR DISTRACTION
waking at this half-lit hour you lapse
into the incredulous body
of early morning, cool with languor
& stillness
there is soon
the retreat into half-dream, your
semi-permanent shell following
the journeys of waking
with gradual daring
in this striated orb
your suddenly immodest body
is drawn to another: gravitates
towards the plane of his moving
in an almost collision of the senses
such precision now in the casual
singe of skins brushing
together with devastation when
the new morning splinters
open like surrender
POEM FOR RETROSPECTION
that afternoon the past dragged
at your heels, trailing
in the wake of your footprints
and coating the door-handle
with a sticky substance
it has stroked your bony shoulders
with knowing grooved fingers,
melting into scuff marks
upon a wooden floor
this day;
when recollection
stabs like broken glass
into the palm when
your thumb is laced with mandarin,
the spacious scent ricocheting
through layers of time and
the clarity of vision
is unrelenting
From: The Body’s Navigation
POEM FOR DISSOLUTION, POEM FOR DISTRACTION, POEM FOR RETROSPECTION
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