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Debbie Lim

Written by mascara on . Posted in Poetry.

Debbie Lim lives in Sydney. Her work has appeared in anthologies including regularly in the Best Australian Poems series (Black Inc.) and Contemporary Asian Australian Poets (Puncher & Wattmann). Recent work appears in Westerly, Island, Rabbit, Overland and the Willowherb Review (UK). Her chapbook is Beastly Eye (Vagabond Press) and she is working on a full-length collection. She was a Mascara Don Bank Poet-in-Residence in 2020–2021.
 
 
 
 
Captive
Hapalochlaena lunulata

You are the one who cupped death in the hand.
Watched it writhe in sunlight, tender-faced,

flashing its blue halos, more precise and smaller
than expected. A slow thrall of limbs rippling

away from itself. Everything might have ended
there: a far sea throbbing in your ear as your

own heart slackened, then subsided. Instead,
this sudden act of mercy as you tipped a palm down—

saw a life jettisoned to the shallows.