"The Strange Thing Kiosai Saw in the River" (1897) by John La Farge via the Metropolitan Museum of Art
by Leone Gabrielle
Goldfish sing
Sometimes like flycatchers.
I don’t listen. Because. Because
I allow myself to be forgiven.
Sometimes like flycatchers.
I don’t listen. Because. Because
I allow myself to be forgiven.
Once, I cut the legs off a sink spider. Not all of them. The spider had not done anything wrong. How did Mother know? Was she cleaning the sink, noticing legs? I used scissors. Hair cutting scissors. She embedded into me a fact, that by cutting off the legs, I am decently bad. I must have been very, very angry. To do that. Though I felt no anger.
Just a weird, curious, compulsion that came instantly from nowhere. I never cut anyone’s legs off after that.
Just a weird, curious, compulsion that came instantly from nowhere. I never cut anyone’s legs off after that.
Because I need to be loved
it’s hard not to listen.
The goldfish are drowning,
but if I listen, I’ll suffocate.
it’s hard not to listen.
The goldfish are drowning,
but if I listen, I’ll suffocate.
That’s the future my sunshine walks into, a winter nesting in autumn’s memory. If I keep letting memories lead me, I’ll arrive at an extinction prison. Breaking branches, cutting off legs, my progress. I could build something nurturing for a change. A creative inclusion, not really radical. A circle. So, I keep rolling on.
As a dog
I live inside my selves, trying to get a piece of biscuit.
Something to fit into, as I have no real shape
that I can call my own for long.
I live inside my selves, trying to get a piece of biscuit.
Something to fit into, as I have no real shape
that I can call my own for long.
It’s not the wind but my mind which waves as breath. Breath that is no longer easy for lungs. I feel the night pull at my elbow. The moon is asleep. But I am here with my mind and the teasing air. The breath of spring, turning warm, turning leaves like a sea swelling its skirts in the rain.
I am not asleep in bed but asleep here with You, the universe.
I am the birl wind, twirling, whirling handfuls of cash in the air. I am forever manipulating my reality to find an anchor to pin myself down, but I am only water, only air, only a piece of donut aquatic. Ephemeral. As a sister and a mother, a daughter and a niece, as an aunty and a granddaughter, but not a grandmother. I am here for now, but now is not infinite. Like the scratchings of a bird, an accumulation of scratches on a long, long place. I am lost and not lost.
I make a life. Love this life but it is not one that I expected. Disappointments and wonders build my story. Creative narrations are needed to grow and grow into strengths, gifts, joys, a budding self-understanding, all one strange song. I am an integrated wishing cache, a catch of breath, sinking into the bones of history. I write like sand into air and then let the scratches remind me of what is possible.
I am not asleep in bed but asleep here with You, the universe.
I am the birl wind, twirling, whirling handfuls of cash in the air. I am forever manipulating my reality to find an anchor to pin myself down, but I am only water, only air, only a piece of donut aquatic. Ephemeral. As a sister and a mother, a daughter and a niece, as an aunty and a granddaughter, but not a grandmother. I am here for now, but now is not infinite. Like the scratchings of a bird, an accumulation of scratches on a long, long place. I am lost and not lost.
I make a life. Love this life but it is not one that I expected. Disappointments and wonders build my story. Creative narrations are needed to grow and grow into strengths, gifts, joys, a budding self-understanding, all one strange song. I am an integrated wishing cache, a catch of breath, sinking into the bones of history. I write like sand into air and then let the scratches remind me of what is possible.
Terra gardens
have many flowers as I have had
many faces. As flowers hunt the sun
I wait to face myself.
have many flowers as I have had
many faces. As flowers hunt the sun
I wait to face myself.
Like a blanket wrapped away until understanding meets me. Listening to the sound of the night. Reminding me that I am nothing but the stories that light my way. Like the moonlight defines shadows in the dark. Inside of self.
The self of a thousand voices. Shells within the universe, tap, tap, tapping the light and dark, rasping away like moleskine tongues of mollusck snails.
The history of years understood by language and caught within the structure of power. Bound to reality. To greed. Hoarding lies and parasitic deceptions, my own cowardly cowries. Heated survival, life’s creativity gardening. Invisible. Though you may recognize me in yourself.
How to weather the sirens of golden fish? I mix myself in so many layers. Never look underneath, next to skin. There lives a hatred hot. Sour breath, flaccid hairy lies. A getaway. Spidery wish to be embedded. Little blond spider with needle legs. I cut, a horrible me inside. No help. Lost, loss, losing. The spider broken. As I am broken. Broken enough to keep going.
Could I have told her? She. Timing blamed me for her difficulties. Too much going on for a child. In that spider, myself, mother. Enemy threat. The rocks to stone. She. I admire her resilience. I get what she has to give. That is enough. Satisfied with broken vessels. Being awoken. Wake apart into the whole. A life’s journey.
The self of a thousand voices. Shells within the universe, tap, tap, tapping the light and dark, rasping away like moleskine tongues of mollusck snails.
The history of years understood by language and caught within the structure of power. Bound to reality. To greed. Hoarding lies and parasitic deceptions, my own cowardly cowries. Heated survival, life’s creativity gardening. Invisible. Though you may recognize me in yourself.
How to weather the sirens of golden fish? I mix myself in so many layers. Never look underneath, next to skin. There lives a hatred hot. Sour breath, flaccid hairy lies. A getaway. Spidery wish to be embedded. Little blond spider with needle legs. I cut, a horrible me inside. No help. Lost, loss, losing. The spider broken. As I am broken. Broken enough to keep going.
Could I have told her? She. Timing blamed me for her difficulties. Too much going on for a child. In that spider, myself, mother. Enemy threat. The rocks to stone. She. I admire her resilience. I get what she has to give. That is enough. Satisfied with broken vessels. Being awoken. Wake apart into the whole. A life’s journey.
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Leone (she/her) is a writer of poetry and prose. She lives in Seymour, a snaking river town in Central Victoria, Australia, on Taungurung country. She has been published in Cordite Poetry Review, Australian Poetry Journal, Pure Slush, and Plumwood Mountain. Leone is the creator of several community art and poetry installations.
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