Your Mother's Hands - Vanessa Page

Your Mother’s Hands

In the kitchen

you are slicing fruit

with hands

that remind you

of your mother


Deliberate,

and lined

they betray you


So too,

these beginnings

of crow’s feet

and pursed lips


as you hover over

autumnal hued

laminex


Careful, for

the influence

is catching


First the hands,

second, the

confused diplomacy


a tapping foot

closed gestures

the economic effort


We are all reinventions;

skin, papered

over skin

Vanessa Page
http://www.ipswichpoetryfeast.com.au/2008/winnersother_4.htm#hc4

Gone, with the Wind - Ian C Smith

Gone, with the Wind

Like the wind we find a way
past prised planks. It pierces gaps
in the copper roof left by thieves.
The patin a of verdigris was our landmark
the colour of a lime milkshake.
Broken glass stains the aisle, soaked and still
all these years after that day’s excess.
Puffed-up pigeons gossip in the groins.
Before the altar the massive organ
has been overturned in a puddle.

They war, enemies without and within.
They conceive, are bereaved, never cede
victory despite the constant counting.
Sex is one bare luxury, extra rations
on a Saturday night after standing
in the double-decker to The Gaumont
to see Margaret Mitchell’s lurid fable.
‘Frankly, I don’t give a damn’
seems a throwaway line to savour
passing the air-raid siren, Dad as Clark Gable.

Ian C Smith
http://www.cordite.org.au/poetry/ian-c-smith-your-hair-was-so-yellow