Boxing

In the attic, I try to write this poem many times
Surrounded by forgotten space, thick
Slabs of wood holding up the roof
I have left the old one, the slipped skin and
Want you to look at me and know it’s missing
Each day is a process of retrieval –
I come up here and bury myself while you
Mow the lawn or hang out the washing
A prediction of muscle joins your shoulders
Each day you work on your jabs,
The power in your raw hand –
The heavy bag spins round and round

When I struggled with another man, a
Stranger, he left marks above my elbows
What could I have done?
Pushed into the fence, bouncing back into
His arms, as though it were foreplay,
A different type of dancing
There was nothing else moving, except –
Maybe, a shiver of cats in the grass,
Crushing the stalks and
Passing through on loveless nails

I keep it hidden –
The hypodermis, the deepest layer of skin.
My body is a hotel of many rooms.
I keep walking home alone –
I want my bearing to say, I don’t know you
I want my skin monstrous, true elephantine.
I love how the city looks at three am, five am.
I want always to walk amongst the night people –
This hardness has kissed and pulled
Me open, put itself inside me like a punch.

 ** 

Small, terrible hour

I want her to gallop into sleep, but midnight brims with duskish heat and she cries between times I drive a nipple into her mouth. I show her the garden in desperation, sleep sleep sleep. How could I fail? Already, the succulents shine palely, like stilbite. It’s God-slot hour, but I can’t go to religion, when she is angry, pawing at my dressing gown. I’m scared. She’s lived closer to me than anyone. What else has she taken? Relaxed, her breathing slows in the long stare of dark. On the cusp, under sky, she neither closes her eyes or wails. My body is a farm, a vast paddock in comparison to her smallness. She swims in sensation, in an unfamiliar hide that doesn’t fit. Yet, necks and limbs of trees, short bushes decant a calmness into her I cannot. Who am I? Smelling of open wound, the other place. When my milk doesn’t come fast enough, she rages. Fingers nailing flesh. My darling, my love, my only, what can I do? I say, I repeat. Night feels like church. Here we are standing in moonlight and the basil is dead. The midwife says babies smell like heaven. She looks at her, you know, infants need a lot of sleep. She is being delicate. Again, I smell like rust and medication. I am horse-shuffling on the edge of a good, long cry. Finally, her occiput drops heavily into my inner elbow. Sometimes I worry she’s made more of shadow. Leaving me in the backyard, behaving strangely.

**

the disciple

i was a fanatic
convinced i would never touch the holy pink of your feet
yes, i was in a bad way
when they cleaned me out
embarrassed to pray for you –
i smiled politely
while their instruments separated my body
i looked at the ceiling
the doctors and anaesthetists, theatre technicians and midwives
worked calmly, as though you arrived every day,
as though the gore,
your high pitched
heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
was just night shift, two hands
holding you aloft
like a freshly marked football
as I vomited from the drugs, disappointed that
everyone held you before i did
that face, fossilised in the nest of your dad’s chest
me, your mother, a head on a pillow, numb from neck down
until the bed was wheeled to recovery
and i was falling asleep while trying to sing to you, proving
i was more than blood moving about in darkness –
more than an incubator
and the midwife pulled my nipple
to your blind mouth
and i shaped the bones beneath your purpling skin
with my voice
ah
all my unrealised belief –
how exhausting,
staying awake (like loving) for unknowable
amounts of time

**

Mandarin she peels it, eats it whole,
spits out the pips and bits of vein

wipes her mouth
wipes the hinges clean of lipstick and juice

pulls out a tissue from her handbag and rubs
her fingers, their soft

hand-cream texture and blue veins: my mother, this house
cures her hands of their youth.

The TV is on too loud, I hate it when she thinks
of the neighbours –

I’m eating a mandarin too, flicking through
channels without stopping

each piece pops in my mouth –
a delicious firework, I swab

the excess on my school shirt, discard the peel
on the arm of the sofa

The screen blocks my view of her
we eat through years, fruit, differently – 

She’s watching me from the dishwasher
I’m pretending not to notice

**

Drama teacher says

girls –

this is a flower, pure and ageless-
imagine yourselves reaching to squeeze it, crush it

now repeat:
it is delicate and beautiful and we
have killed it because we were told to

and we’re planted in rows at his feet
struck by a cult-like gravity

the room clacks with gum chew,
a few earnest nods

how can the powerless
be so pitiless?

but my palms are unmarked by the wetness
of crushed petals

it was not a fair test
girls, this was a perfect specimen

but everyone offered a palm
that curled into a fist

and he says you are soiled,
you have crushed goodness

skirts tent between knees
weighed down by clasped hands

close your eyes and imagine a flower

 ———————————- 

Stephanie Powell is a poet based in Naarm. She is the winner of the 2024 Woorilla Prize, the 2024 Ada Cambridge Prize for Poetry and her poem, ‘Notes from Greenland’ was shortlisted for the Woollahra Digital Literary Award (2024). She has three collections of poetry, Bone (Halas Press, 2021), Gentle Creatures (Vagabond Press, 2023) and Invisible Wasp (Liquid Amber Press, 2024).

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