Poem: Dear Helen
Books & Poetry
This week’s Poet’s Corner contribution is from Jordan White in Adelaide.
Dear Helen
Grandmother beloved, 1947–2016
I have been trying to write but
ash keeps falling from the
tired autumn sky.
Your cough bursts and then lingers and – is inevitably still.
There’s a war again, another city burning on TV.
Your olive couch is somewhere else now, given
shape by the memories I keep on running back to.
Some days are only lovable from a distance
but I keep promising myself the swooping magpies are just
falling fruit
too ripe for harvest.
If I had to spell it out:
head down on the bus, the bus wrapping itself around corners,
forehead on the glass, tired eyelids, the city –
acutely aware that we’re made only of memories.
It’s spring again
the mornings are bright and wreckless
like open wounds
my thoughts are razor blades
softened by the decades
and Jayde’s spirit,
it’s been dampened by all the men
who will tell her to smile, yet
in my dreams we are kids again –
I’m painting on your loungeroom floor
beside the cold cup of tea
and I swear we’re going to paint the city,
promise we’ll plant a garden in the sky
this time
arrange roses and lilies and
trap butterflies
so they keep on missing
you
the phone rings and I don’t answer
my head is a riot on the pillow
and you’re so blue
but I wake up and I am living,
missing you
unable to help but wonder:
your last breathe – was it just that or
a sigh of relief?
Jordan White is a fourth-year marketing and journalism student at the University of South Australia. Previously the Comms Editor at the university’s online and print ‘Verse Magazine’ and Chief of Staff at its online student journalism platform ‘On The Record’, his own work has been published in ‘Verse Magazine’, ‘Brain Drip’, ‘Year13’ and ‘Glass’. He is also a Research Assistant at UniSA’s Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science.
Readers’ original and unpublished poems of up to 40 lines can be emailed, with postal address, to poetscorner@solsticemedia.com.au. Submissions should be in the body of the email, not as attachments. A poetry book will be awarded to each accepted contributor.
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