‘It is better to be feared than loved.’—Lewis Carroll,
Alice’s Adventures Under Ground
In a Somerset cave she scoops up silence in a jar.
There’s a faint drop of h2o in the distance,
a kerosene lamp lighting her back to lessons where multi-headed
hydra (good preparation for a life subterranean) and paramecia are dodgem cars under the microscope bouncing off each other like she now finds difficult in a crowded street.
Minuscule hairs in her ears indicate presence of the other.
She prefers to keep hers still
but thunderclouds continue to mass from the north full of possibility.
Bikies glass a whispering junkie, Alligator mississipiensis
has a mating call hard to resist and the scorpion
she keeps in a tank on the dining room table tracks her vibration when she’s out for a walk. What attracts her to one above all?
Goon, cannibal, child-killer on Death Row?
A solitary cell attracts her the most.
And now she’s here, her hair grows long.
Julie Maclean 