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ARTS AND CULTURE

Spider shiver

  • 19 June 2017
  Selected poems  

 

Think back from the future of a bat

 

hear

by grace

 

beyond your range

as you hang

 

with leathered

folds

 

head

drawn

 

by gravity

brain

 

to bone

at night

 

your skin darker

than sky

 

 

 

 

Shiver

 

to build the bless

of a soul spun

in curled leaf

left since autumn

dry on the stem

 

(another is unstamped in the box

beneath the latest literary magazine)

 

my fingers

tentatively test it

for spinners and

for silk that

shivers with prey

 

 

 

 

Fresh and salt

 

A grey annunciation

of polished sky —

 

                           its steel

& the bay

               — that intercept

 

of rain

on adolescent sweat.

 

 

Anne Elvey’s recent poetry publications include Kin and This Flesh That You Know. White on White is forthcoming from Cordite Books. Anne is managing editor of Plumwood Mountain and chief editor with Melbourne Poets Union. She holds honorary appointments at Monash University and University of Divinity where she is a member of the Centre for Research in Religion and Social Policy.