daughters depart

 

they are in the waves

beating for shore

as the little fish of their absence

swims in the fissures of my long grown bones

 

currents take hold

until

from sentiment

i fall to sediment

where the fumerole heat

escapes

in deep

dark

down

hair

a fontanelle

tells the stalker of memory

the necessity of tenderness

 

 

Janet Charman

 

 

 

 

 

Janet Charman’s monograph ‘SMOKING! The Homoerotic Subtext of Man Alone’ is available as a free download at Genrebooks. Her essay ‘Mary Mary Quite Contrary’ on Allen Curnow’s suppression of the poetics of Mary Stanley, appears in the current issue on-line of Pae Akoranga Wāhine, the journal of the Women’s Studies Association of NZ.