and – by Helen Jarvis
RUNNER-UP, GWEN HARWOOD POETRY PRIZE 2024
(Please note that this poem looks best viewed full screen on a desktop computer.)
today I drove into a rainbow, its half-arch
picked clean and landing in the rubble beside
the new McDonald’s, and the wet road shone in my wake
and I thought how, decades past, on my first long drive to uni,
the boot filled with books and bedding, an industrial
desk lamp and the bundle of photos I would stick on my wall,
a late September downpour made a full double arch
across the motorway, approaching my new city home
and a fig-tree espaliered across a bothy wall,
a few years later, showed me intention greening over time
and he took off his business shirt, said ‘put it on’
and it covered my breasts, and my hips were drowned
in pressed white cotton twill, the rounded tail
hanging to my knees, and I pushed the sleeves
past my wrists like a child in dress-ups, full of glamour,
and I was a pale brush stroke reflected in a man’s eyes
and I remember the reeking white flush
of May blossom in the alley where the garages were
and today, on my local Facebook page, between posts
selling used homewares and complaints about kids
on electric scooters, a white cockatoo was found
in a tree, calling ‘hello Billy’ and blowing kisses,
and this is how life finds ways to commit to you,
through figleaves sprawled across old bricks,
and Garamond type arranged on a white page,
the punch-cutter’s flourish of the italic ampersand,
leaving his trace down five centuries
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Image: p and tj arnold/Unsplash
This poem appeared in Island 167 in 2023. If you would like to see this poem laid out in the way the poet intended, order a print issue here.
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