How My Mother’s Embroidered Apron Unfolds in My Life(After Gorky) A single scene pinches the thread from time– An open book on a disused sewing table;She disgorges wondrous polysyllables.She smells of Sunday baths(My father smells of cut grass)I write my name in nervous print, I think,Tracing her imparted wisdom,And stain the paper, but scar the tableWith the force of my shaking hand. Now I am sitting in the Church at Fourvière,Harsh light breaks the hill into shards,But the dome itself is cool and damp and greyAnd she is primrose pink, and leafy gold.She is a mosaic of blood, and green and saintly blue.A single swallow breaks the silence, skipsFrom end to end to end again.A morning’s liturgy—the one bird’s crackling clawsSearching for the coolness of the crypt. She, like him, would be aghast,At the weeping litany of my sins.But that confession is not mine to make or answer to.A mother should not know her offspring too well.From the moment the apron string is cut, we are free to beAnd to bring, make or undo, whatever the hell we want toSuch is the mother’s lot, such is our blessing. Sometimes, sitting down for dinner, or working on a draft,I think of the time I traced the Murrumbidgee on the table’s oak.
– Robert Mullins
Survival Unencumbered and freed from battle,from duty and the designs of men,freed from the siege of Leningradtwo boots at easeon a suburban shoe store’s counter.Here where transactions are quietly civilizedthere’s a sense of menacein the dark boots’ presence,in the wooden soles,in their uppers of patchworked scraps of leather,each roughly bound with a horsehide band. Once they were desperately cobbled togetheryet well enough to withstandgrey days and star-spread nightsand the brilliant firestorms of war.See them stumbling over ice,standing shadowless in snow,pacing through the slush,avoiding the bodies of horses and men,the seeping lifeblood, a gaudy red.You’d say the spirit of these boots survives,saved by good fortuneor by someone who understood.They have known the colour of the blizzard,the whip and the sting of the windand the cold, the cold.– Elaine Barker For Osip “...and the centuries / Surround me with fire.” - Osip Mandelstam A hand from a passing boatLifts shadowCold is sungAnd liftedInto the boat of nightBars creep along the moonSilver cigarettesFlaring in a cool torchYou wandered amongReflectionsA shadow of the song you werePassingFragments of heavenTo those who stood with you.
– James Waller
Robert Mullins was born and raised in Brisbane. He is currently a graduate student in philosophy at