Poems appear in the current issues of Verity La (see Cyclothymia below), Island Solastalgia….(below) and Stilts (below), forthcoming in Event (Canada).
Cyclothymia
It floods like shame
after a lie
like a bleeding glacier
or blue larva
It floods a motherboard
dropped in water
It floods leaving trees
as heads cocooned
in spider webs
in a crown of thorns
devouring industries
It floods like fire
on a Greek island
It floods in slow mo
when you roll your car
and wait to die
from awe and curiosity
after a Goodbye letter
infection by malware
in the airborne contagion
of Madras Eye it blinds
in widening capillaries
of the neck, the face
neurones surrender
then forget
shaking loose unfamiliar territory
like happiness
Solastalgia in the Mouth of the Great Vowel Shift
after Robert Macfarlane
Going back to the word zawn Are there any remains
of that long drawled yawn as jetsam from the time
they came in brigs and barques to be unstitched off the Otways?
What words did they use for splicing micro granites
in the unfolding of The Great Ocean Road
It curdles the blood skimming over rough sleepers
shipwrecked under neon in shop doorways of a Melbourne street
adrift in the hummer druze of 3am
One carries a dog for a gun
The parish sprawls in case you missed it
We sweat for the ball click for a new wife skid down
the decay chain flanked by rift margins sediments of keratin
where if you listen you can hear the love or distress calls
of the huia a sound fossil preserved by two men
Glossy yin black huia fanning its yang tail
reel to reel layered in waves fixed in crackle and hum
O let them be left, wildness and wet—
a line from Inversnaid—Gerard Manley Hopkins
I am trying to keep my head
above
but today elegies of
belugas retrieved from
Arctic floes
sand bags over a crashing dam
quietly designed
to stem the rage
of winter on the wane
So what to do about puddle clay
short-lived lichen the grey heron
nesting on terminal moraine in full stop
the general thrusting
How to mourn
drowned mountains
drowned spires visible only
at low tide
bells tolling intermittently
across the North Sea / summoning/
Terracotta chimneys
from wasted villages
wait for the return
Last century /it surprises me to say/
my girlfriend’s nightdress catches fire
/unlike a kingfisher/
her sculpted skin pink and glistening makes
new topographies neck to knee
She lifts her face away
What it takes
to keep the head above
rivers of mud cathedrals of grief
The way it is
oceans collide in terraced homes along sea roads
at the summit of high peaks
leaving a souvenir tree
disposable hearth /from Ikea/
exposed bones on the north face
of women in boots men like Mallory
LINKS TO POEMS ONLINE
Absolute Zero on the 6 o’clock News
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
