Kylie Rose lives in Maitland with her four children. In 2007 she was a resident at the LongLines Poetry Workshop at Varuna, the Writers’ House, and was awarded a retreat fellowship to work on her collection, Sea Level. She is due to return to Varuna as a resident/ consultant for the 2008 LongLines Community Week. Her suite of poems, “Doll Songs” was commended in the 2006 Newcastle Poetry Prize, and an extract of Sea Level was included in the 2007 Newcastle Poetry Prize anthology. She is currently collaborating with poets and composers on a project commissioned by the Hunter Writers’ Centre.

Bees,
Nanjing

In cloisonné fields,
emerald greenhouses cling-wrap the earth
and incubate the foetus grain.

At the toll gates, bees rap and rattle
my face painted on the glass eyes of the coach.
Bees propel themselves

at my steely hive with zeal,
their pharyngeal meal meant to ease
the propolis seal stoppering my throat.

Welcome Queen, incarnate, they hum.
Nanjing––plum blossom city––
opens its fist for you.

Hanshan Temple,
Suzhou

Gilt flames squall.
Incense pours into carved
and fecund air.

From the pagoda,
temple faces squint
with faithful irises of coin.

Three blows, the bell’s belly
induces fortune’s triplets.
A fourth strike

renders me
fortune’s orphan.
I leave, a monk,  

robes––dissolved peach––
flirting with fallen
sycamore floss.

One Thousand People Rock,
Suzhou

In the Dynasty of Song,
one thousand men lost their voices
on a stone octave.
Still ringing in the spring rain of peonies,
one thousand voices sink my skin.

White sepulchral birds in unison,
chant through bony, fluted beaks. One
thousand egrets howl a mating dirge,
calling soul from stone
to nest.