Poetry:
Catching Light North of the Tropic of Capricorn

Jayne Fenton Keane
Griffith University
PhD Student, School of Arts
E-mail: jfk@poetinresidence.com

vitality

He is forcing you to see your broken parts.
He is not interested in your cracks
or the names you have buried in rehearsals
of healing. He initiates your head with organisms
born in the sparks of unbearable pain and you try to discover
the source of their power, sneaking looks over
your left shoulder in the dark.

 

aura

Each night he comes to trace black circles under your eyes.
Each morning he comes to tie up the muscles around your ribs
and you resist him with memories of being cloud-daughter
above the skies of Kakadu. You remember your mother
wrapped in humidity and how you floated
in a sea of mist, embracing the spirits of Kakadu.

 

counterglow

In the science of streets
you can never tell when repairing steam engines
in the middle of an industrial revolution will lead
to the invention of power. His fingers have arced
above your head since 1882, and his name
has relieved your fear of the dark but not your fear
of the light, as it switches on your nakedness.

 

luminance

Clouds of dark particles gather at her ankles, this mother
who can't feel the sun's nuclear kiss on her lips.
I am wounded by the application of rings she says,
rubbing her cheek against the poster of Saturn above her bed.
Engorgement is not possible without matter.
She died bending water inside cumulus.
All you have left of her are volatile filaments
and a physics born inside unnatural voltage

 

© Jayne Fenton Keane

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