THE SEARCH
The moon drags like an old stylus.
Earth sounds cackle,
A dropped sparkler going out.
Dark guests afford my open door.
Blue stockinged Blake.
Kafka in worn slippers…
How many titles have tumbled down
From the shelves!
How many mirrors are left to sack!
At least I can forget about reflections:
Am no longer
Afraid in looking back.
I put the midnight sun out to cool
By winter’s woodpile:
Call forth Phantasm’s cat…
That’s too tall an order! It sits,
In the peach tree,
Tail flicking –, a silver
Mouse-like poet
Pocketed
Within the teeth; the ghoulish
Consternation… a reminder
How fashion’s
Destined for us.
THE SOFT DOMESTIC ECONOMY
Via the vending maelstrom
Machine
I get a blighted
Portfolio poultice –,
An art-deco
Electric toothbrush –,
Three cut-out
Culinary
Square meals –,
A jump-to-it
“Confederacy
Of confidence”
Madrigal where
Nothing
Is as it seems – and
The usual
Acidic glare from
My bed-sit
Night nurse who
Has…
Madam Blavatsky’s
Eyes.
PLUME
I have aged by my crying river where the water-weed
Harbours a sodden almanac.
In this hemisphere the rain
Tendrils red
Upon a parched heart; its shape
Abstruse; a dropped star.
Well recounted is the quest of ‘the other’. Pacing out
Endurance Road, Wolf-Song Woman
Wrote her dust epigraphs
On the boots of fishermen,
The silver-forks of Dame Fortune’s
High-fliers in repose.
From Quebec to Armenia. Bombay. Sydney-town,
She unravelled the dialects…
Strung them lowly
To be mystically
Arpeggioed by diverse
Adepts of the ‘mouth-bow’.
And how rich was the sowing of the Spirit Fruit!
Each yield a hoop
Of plenty. Both
Huntress and gatherer, net offerings
Graced the guilded halls
Of poeticised pogrom.
How many climbed aboard that bronze saddle
She’ll not say.
What loss flash-flooded the verdant oasis? Self
Destruct? Premonition?
To this day the ‘seven living sins’ continue
Their vigil…
Indigo is the tranquil sleep-walker harnessed
To the crying-river;
Vermilion the sickle moon.
Ash, the oration
In any tone. The fable! Colourless:
Pigment it gone…
A MYSTIC MOMENT
… Thinking about
The ones
I’ve loved before,
Time passed
Slowly:
Parking
Its polyphonic
Pork-pie
Hat
In a field of
Verboten
Stone.
Stefanie Bennett has published several poetry books and has poems with Illya’s Honey, The Fib Journal, Eskimo Pie, Dead Snakes, The Mind[less] Muse and others. Of mixed ancestry [Irish/Italian/Paugussett-Shawnee] she was born in Queensland, Australia.
Stefanie’s latest poetry title is ‘The Vanishing’ published by Walleah Press and available from Walleah, Amazon and Fishpond Books.
Bindweed Magazine 