The Unfolding (Anthology)
Lily-Rose Pouget (she/her)
Femme currently writing and playing on the sacred and unceded soil of the Wurundjeri people of the Eastern Kulin Nations.
The Unfolding experiments with different poetic forms in an effort to document the plasticity of connection. It's always the unfolding and refolding of everything all at once.
Naarm, Eastern Kulin Nation of the Wurundjeri peoples.
The Unfolding
Sometimes I swear
I can hear it
the wound closing to a white stitch
as I pull water from the ground with calloused hands to wash myself
Isn’t this all a kind of love? The one of hanging your heart out to warm in the summer?
I look to the patience of ordinary things like soap drying quietly in its dish and think
yes
like a mandarin
I too can hold the light in my skin till a shell softens
will fall open to a string of seeds
There's a first time for everything
more like
everything’s the first time.
(I swear I hear the calloused hands
hanging patience quietly and think
yes
like light,
my skin will fall open for the first time.)
etc etc
What else is beautiful?
your hands
and of course every blister will ease
but when I look closer and see
a tiny street running in the crease of your palm
I wish I was there too
etc etc
Slightly Jarring
I
we peel the artichokes together but end up eating them alone.
tired husks curl on
plates and the sun falls now like
a low humming thing.
2
blood moon blessings
raging bin fire in
the gutter tonight people
cook over the ruins happy.
Affirmations
Come on
show
your teeth a little!
Loss is not my teacher but
It does blow me open
ouch
I refuse to become a dried up river bed
I am the skin of the onion and the core all at once
I am a sponge
I am the sun.