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.