Monday, December 9, 2013

Tuesday Poem - Breast Imaging By Susan Fealy


Breast Imaging

I see the bird first,
her head snuggled down
into the green of herself.
Her tail is a handle.
A handle to hold a bird.
A handle to tether a breast.
This is a breast made of stone.


*

A pyramid
of apples, untouched,
and a woman,
calm and complete
as a dinner plate,
her face floats
just below the black glass.


*

I bivouac near the window
far away from the man.
Beside him
a frail statue,
her two small breasts.
I gift him the dark woman,
her two blind breasts.


*

Are you here for review?
There is always a talker.
My companion is clean-limbed
and bronze-skinned,
folds her vowels like a venetian blind,
her bones are strong
as handrails.


*

She navigates, close as a lover,
captures black bubbles,
maps echoes,
locates a white button
like a core in the dark.
She wipes clear gel
off my skin.


*

The orchids are rising
from the river of black glass.
I can feel the heartbeat
of the ceiling. The talker’s beside me
in a wheelchair. The orderly
kindles the lift.
We descend.



Breast Imaging is the pick of the poems for me in the new issue
of Australian Poetry Journal. Susan Fealy is a Melbourne-based
poet and clinical psychologist (to quote from her biography) who
began writing regularly in 2007. 

2 comments:

  1. The slow watchfulness of this poem is quite breathtaking. I love the gentleness of the 'gifting', the closeness, the heartbeat of the ceiling. Thanks for sharing, Jennifer and Susan.

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  2. That's a powerful poem, Jennifer. It seems to build in intensity, like vignettes coming together to form one powerful, yet still understated in some sense, whole.

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