Australian Poetry
More and more I live with your paintings
or more precisely the moment
you first saw them and chose them:
the red bird sitting in
An American wannabe child star
told the workshop of his still-born
brother. How his mother had said
the lost one, endlessly cast in a silent
Contemporary Asian Australian Poets edited by Adam Aitken, Kim Cheng Boey, and Michelle Cahill
by John Kinsella •
Westerly 58:1 edited by Delys Bird and Tony Hughes-d’Aeth
Afterwards, Jiah Khan slung her red silk dupatta
from a ceiling joist in her Juhu beach apartment,
my viral-stricken buck rattled to sleep curled by
my bed, and I woke to the cold body of silence –
Distant, untouchable night is stooping
over fingers of street-lights
that push her away. And the children of night?
The children of night are in hiding