In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Barbara Temperton reads her poem 'Anniversary' which features in the 2016 Western Australian anthology.

Anniversary

We've been in mourning just over a year,
or just under, depending on the date we're marking.
Not always celebrations, anniversaries
have a way of keeping their appointments:
they're ticked off at the level of the body
and brain, our biochemical wakes.

I've felt strange all week, sick and sleep-obsessed,
a willed agoraphobic. Show me the cave
I need to crawl into and I'll be there.

No headline-making bereavement here,
just the absence of two small dogs,
their apparitions appearing to join me in my chair.
This evening, with fever, I made room for shades
and only then did I mark the date,
our two dogs dead twelve weeks apart, a year ago.

Their anniversary arrived like a virus
assaulting the muscles of my heart
in a darkened room.

Barbara Temperton

'Anniversary' appears in 'States of Poetry - WA'. You can learn more about States of Poetry and read the full anthologies here

Read Barbara Temperton's biography in 'States of Poetry - WA'