Poem: Invisibility
Books & Poetry
Kim Waters pauses for a moment of self-reflection in this week’s Poet’s Corner contribution.
Invisibility
Just when you need
Some confirmation,
Even an outline would do,
You find yourself
Looking in a hand mirror
At an empty room.
What does it feel like
To be weightless?
To have fate tickling
The soles of your feet,
Laughing at its own joke
With you as the butt?
There’s always the
Promise of a new day,
But the halo that surrounds
Those words doesn’t match
The itch between the rut
Of your shoulder blades.
And again and again
You find yourself
Talking to no-one
At the other end of the line.
Then all the things
You want to say
Appear on a billboard
In the voice of someone
More famous than you,
Someone who knows
How to sashay
Through a doorway,
Leaving you,
Like Boo Radley,
In the corner of the room.
The stars come out
But they’re jagged
As always.
You light a match,
Cupping the flame
With your hand
As you lean forward
To the mirror
And test your breath.
Kim Waters lives in Melbourne. She has a Master of Arts degree in creative writing from Deakin University and her poems have appeared in The Australian, Going Down Swinging, Verge, StylusLit, The Shanghai Literary Review and La Piccioletta Barca. She won the 2020 Woorilla Poetry Prize.
Readers’ original and unpublished poems of up to 40 lines can be emailed, with postal address, to poetscorner@solsticemedia.com.au.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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