Poetry Anthology
Olivia Wong
(she/her)
Instagram: @liv.r.wong
My name is Olivia Wong and I am 23 years old. I grew up in Brisbane (Turrabal country) and am an aspiring writer. I started writing just for myself, on a purely therapeutic level, but soon found my flow and writing style in the form of a lyrical free verse. Introspection has always nurtured and plagued me of a sorts, which explains me as a psychology student as well, but I found writing poetry was not only liberating but also extraordinarily satisfying to physically see the beauty of my thoughts. I love to explore themes of love and sexuality because so often, they are the strongest and most universal of emotions. I am passionate about mental health and in my writing, I hope to make people feel seen and validated, in the tiniest of moments that I know we all share throughout our lifetime, and make us all feel a little less alone in our heads.
***
Spinach teeth
I washed your words clean
And I washed them good
To make them gleam
With what you hid underneath,
Because you would if you could –
Translate yourself to me and to you.
Because words do not mean what they do,
But they should.
Words should be taken as they are seen,
Not dismembered by every change in degree.
But you were too weak to see what I saw,
I thought
It was worth each bite mark withstood
If each frightful bark stood you closer to me;
The one that saw you as more than you seemed.
Because closer was good.
Closer meant I’d given all that I could
To be loved as I should.
But closer’s not love,
Just large pores, spinach teeth.
So when I washed your words clean,
I just misunderstood.
A stranger told me
Head by head
Rounded cheeks
A stranger found my headless feet.
They told me,
Strained through witted heat,
My clever words could not defeat
Who I am, and
Always been.
A stranger picked me off the bed, and
Threw me all the way to home.
One stranger, only one to know
Through witted words gone head to toe
That didn’t care for all the scars
I’d joked about but barely showed.
He said like art
Deep and low -
You act tougher than you are.
Morning came and off I goed.
The lousy mailman
It was morning
And with a coffee in hand Steam was adorning Enveloped her head.
Straight out the door, Straight into the morn,
Each step that she tread Like the sun was just born.
T’was lightness that led her To the mailbox she dread. Cos’ just like each morning On the sunniest of days,
The box lay there empty
In that warm yellow haze. Letters from her lover
Was the promise he’d sworn. So when birds started taunting
At the beginning of dawn,
She’d slip from the covers
And put on her socks,
And prepared for the scorn
Of that white empty box
That dispatched empty promises
And a box left to mourn.