BIRD OF
After Margaret Preston
When I couldn’t conceive,
he drew a lyrebird
on our bedroom wall.
Ordered me to colour her in.
She was sucking from the throat
of the waratah
He had his peacock feathers on
and winked as if I knew.
I noticed his open eye
reflecting a green tarantula.
I struggled in the charcoal frame,
such hard black lines.
That day he wore his Aztec head-dress
as codpiece.
Seed pod gonads all the way down
straight to the earth's core.
My herringbone spine
twisted to Kahlo
at the things he’d made me do
Sleep with portraits of dead men,
taking in their foetid breath,
dusty company
I'd been opened like a peony,
blood frilling in tendrils
down my cherry blossom kimono.
Dye shot into rivulets
where the Amazon had run so wet before.
When it was over
I pulled my worn boots from the
clod, spat venom into those spidery eyes,
beat back sword grass from the rainforest
down the Gippsland road.
Clouds were cobalt petals now
My pinks birthing emerald
and sapphire suns in the calico sky.
First published in ETZ, 2014
After Margaret Preston
When I couldn’t conceive,
he drew a lyrebird
on our bedroom wall.
Ordered me to colour her in.
She was sucking from the throat
of the waratah
He had his peacock feathers on
and winked as if I knew.
I noticed his open eye
reflecting a green tarantula.
I struggled in the charcoal frame,
such hard black lines.
That day he wore his Aztec head-dress
as codpiece.
Seed pod gonads all the way down
straight to the earth's core.
My herringbone spine
twisted to Kahlo
at the things he’d made me do
Sleep with portraits of dead men,
taking in their foetid breath,
dusty company
I'd been opened like a peony,
blood frilling in tendrils
down my cherry blossom kimono.
Dye shot into rivulets
where the Amazon had run so wet before.
When it was over
I pulled my worn boots from the
clod, spat venom into those spidery eyes,
beat back sword grass from the rainforest
down the Gippsland road.
Clouds were cobalt petals now
My pinks birthing emerald
and sapphire suns in the calico sky.
First published in ETZ, 2014
Julie Maclean