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Special N.01 – Martin Harrison Special Issue

spring chromatic

by Ella O'Keefe

this year more oranges

will stay on the orange tree

a little jar on the shelf

– sugar and globs of morning sun

 

this night is full of sound

trilled calls undercut

by wings and embers

compositions apprehended only

once others drop away

my lines cannot hold the weight

of this word                ‘perception’

    (your word)

it floats in

strange ground,    an environment

emerging or stepping off a boat

moments before the elevator

arrives. In Cambridge

rippled green light

in the backs which connect

    river to sky

 

late telegrams bounces across cobbles

time-travels from the besotted 70s

air       unscrolls

    from airmail packets, pages of brass

flagons, un peu français

making its shape known to vowels

often corralled between hedgerows

don’t forget your pencil box

of unused colours, a way of pretending

to thatch the haystack (likewise French inflected)

 

like Bonnard prints for explaining

what can never really be held

living in the edges of a postage stamp

three handkerchiefs of lawn,

actual walls,

open then close the gate

but keep some thoughts

in a pale blue envelope

 

flecked harbour through a spout

the voice inscribes itself

on the ground of other-narratives

reach for a different colour

turn the engine

 

looking at the slow moving cars

able to picture under the asphalt

     this stuff – a lemon in the boot

tea drenched light

falling on the blush scrub

you stand and make

a point, a perspective

Published: September 2015
Ella O'Keefe

is a poet and researcher living in Melbourne. She is the Audio Producer for Cordite Poetry Review and has previously produced work for radio. She encountered Martin Harrison’s teaching and innovative courses in poetics, sound studies and genre as a University of Technology Sydney undergraduate and he was the supervisor of her honours thesis in 2009.

An Australian and international
journal of ecopoetry and ecopoetics.

Plumwood Mountain Journal is created on the unceded lands of the Gadigal and Wangal people of the Eora Nation. We pay our respects to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and to elders past, present and future. We also acknowledge all traditional custodians of the lands this journal reaches.

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