_DSC9027_3Jordie Albiston’s latest titles are XIII Poems (Rabbit Poet Series, 2013) and The Weekly Poem: 52 exercises in closed & open forms (Puncher & Wattmann, 2014).  She lives in Melbourne.

 

 
 
 
 
Rubidium

Rb– Woodward was obsessed with blue    tie    office ceiling    parking space    all painted blue       perhaps he did not know love    love is there in the flame emission spectrum    a brightness of
rubidus    love-ly dark red    & tomorrow evening    just before 9    she will wind her way up to
Paisley Park for the Lebanese fireworks & hold to her lover & enjoy the burst of atomic time
shower the end-of-year sky    love is forever almost    his half-life thrice the age of the universe
scientia vincere tenebras

 

the storm last night was large    & morning’s sea is Shut like a jaw
it leaves not even the heel of a shoe of anyone gone “home”     for
some while we walk    chaotica strewn all over the shore & scores
& scores of miniscule beings bereft of kith & kin    a shag protects
what is left of a jut    a bit of rock thrown up like joy from the very
floor of the world    you know my emotions before I feel them you
know my definitions    & gulls fly sullenly through the sky    mirror-
ed there in the continental drift of your vapoury silvery eyes    if I
break you open    you will catch fire    if I say the wrong thing    say
it wronger    if I just say nought nought nought    but I don’t pick up
I don’t know the signs & where was I when all this was taught    we
turn ourselves toward the wetlands & for some while we walk    I
keep half an eye for a Lewin’s Rail in the tangled lignum & sea club-
rush but nothing nothing nothing    no Baillon’s Crake working the
reeds or glasswort sedge or grass    the storm last night was large
o where do they go when the wind blows faster than time?    the
word is —    & I like how it sounds but I don’t know what it means
don’t know if I know if it matters this morning    & this is no time
for being a poet    the pieces are here but nowhere to put them the
word is here —    the kisses are here —    but no mouths