Telecommunications

a body
hangs……………….. from a telecommunications
tower ………………. for an entire day
before a specialist………… arrives………… from ………… Sydney
to ………… .. .. .. .. .. cut down ………the body
………… ………… ………… …discovers
teenage love letter ………… ………… that is not
a love letter ………… ………in pair of pissed pants

…………children sit in classrooms
told …………….. ..don’t look out the window
………… ……….. ….and radio stations
…………………… … warn locals …………….. don’t look up

**

Your chance
for mum

This is your chance
mum. To play Joni Mitchell
in the kitchen at 10pm. To dance
as if this world is watching. To smoke
cigarettes with strangers. To pick
the phone up again. Say bitch
shut up without the sting.
To hang abstract art
from wonky rafters.
To drink entire bottles.
To cherish each day
as its own disaster.

Seek out pashes from old
acquaintances & love
with a belly full of stitches.
To celebrate friends
who adore your
shyness. To smoke
reefers, riddle
crossword puzzles,
eat continental.
Just to cook yourself
dinner again. To find
your delicacy. To do
your nails & weep
on beaches. To give
yourself luck, chance.
To say fuck you
over & over
again.

 ———————————–

Tim Loveday is a poet, writer, educator and baby academic. His work explores class, masculinity, online radicalisation, rurality and climate collapse. He won the 2022 & 2024 Dorothy Porter Poetry Awards and the 2023 Venie Holmgren Environmental Poetry Award, came runner-up in the 2024 Cloncurry Poetry Prize and was a finalist in the 2023 David Harold Tribe Poetry Prize, the 2024 Griffith Review Emerging Voices Prize and the 2024 Montreal International Poetry Prize. Tim teaches Creative Writing at Unimelb and RMIT. He is a current PhD candidate in Creative Writing at Unimelb. You can find out more at: timloveday.com.

.