Fiona Wright Poems

First, the dust cross-pollinates.
Guards in saggy khaki scratch
their noses, spit phlegm
before their stamps rubber
...

My sister doesn't shop at Bankstown any more
because the drivers are all crazy, or else they all
hold both a licence and a pension card.
...

Silt, and minerals.
The brittling walls
now float on the waning water,
...

When their skirts swell in the flouncing water
like the thick wave
of a stingray, and their hair
grows weedlike on their cheeks,
...

The old stilts creak,
creak and clank
in the water's plump lap,
lipped oysters cling to chafe-legged piers.
...

I'm wearing a little thin
dress and the space
between buildings and sky honeys.
The road narrows - this,
...

The evenings have grown sharp now.
Light slinks through the blind slats,
the gaps beneath lintels.
...

after Marjorie Barnard

At first cut
it collapses like a slashed tire.
This translucent flesh
...

For Jane


To her, they never slithered -
rather a rustling, the stiff
...

for Chewy and Ella


1
Short glass, the petrol gleam
...