Poems

Twenty-four Catherines

I wonder if I could belong on a small island
with a wild side 40°S         this chaos of spume

bullying its way into natural-born fissures
between needles of basalt     cumulus making

its dark mischief        the ideal backdrop
for a tryst with a dangerous man, a gun, a killing

I would spend my remaining years gazing out
trying to spot the hull of a wrecked barque

blood-stained calico billowing into the inferno
thankful for dry land, a warm scarf and imagination

that place reserved in my cloudy memory where once
I did belong 55°N before I got restless and wandery

The Neva, carrying 200 women and children from Cork was shipwrecked off King Island, Tasmania, 1835

From my latest chapbook, Spirit.

White witch hitching

Had I owned     a primrose 2CV
/two steam horses     four wheels/   in ‘73

I would not have      climbed into a truck
with that ugly farmhand        /pas Anglais/

who took country lanes          peut-être
to pluck the courage        to attack

swerving back      on the freeway      to the ferry
I missed             by fifteen minuits

Picked up by a suit     instead
in a slick sedan         dinner en famille

in a room out of         a Maupassant story
/autocorrecting to motor song, milk thistle, Newcastle/

Sailing the bay            next day Le Havre
in a couta boat       out of van Gogh’s Saint Marie

How could I forget the canvas-ripping
speed of jeune men          I was Jeanne d’arc

Maid of Lorraine       /autocorrecting to
Dark Zen/            virgin soul intact

Back then              fearless           full of it
missing the flames        by an eyelash

First appeared in Shearsman, 2021.

LINKS TO POEMS ONLINE

Julie Maclean, Piffing Yonnies into the Post-Industrial

https://not-very-quiet.com/2018/09/16/absolute-zero-on-the-6-oclock-news/

https://not-very-quiet.com/2019/09/21/sirenia-at-the-lido/

https://www.stiltsjournal.com/single-post/2019/09/22/O-let-them-be-left-wildness-and-wet%E2%80%94

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/250060

http://cordite.org.au/tags/julie-maclean/

http://verityla.com/earth-apples-of-modern-love-and-mushrooms-julie-maclean/

http://antiphon.org.uk/index.php/act-three-13/442-woman-at-window-julie-maclean

http://redroomcompany.org/poet/julie-maclean/

http://www.inksweatandtears.co.uk/pages/?p=4799

http://www.foame.org/Issue10/biographies/bio-maclean.html

http://www.ofipress.com/macleanjulie.htm

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