Three poems by Linda Stevenson

Ithaca - Painting by Linda Stevenson
Ithaca – Painting by Linda Stevenson

Class

Rip into me, bourgeois pretense…
my intimates will laugh uproariously
and count you out. There is a deeper love
between the convicted than you can poke at;
when we pass at the cell door, we exchange
poems that burn guts, the ones you
have none of. Trot out that old-fashioned formula,
with quaint décor terms, we’ll copy and paste
to the helicopter blades, spelling whir away
with your heads. Read the news too.
Pop into church for refreshers in saints’white,
to school for a new set of chalk, speak
like fruit, fool yourselves. We are taken up,
claiming worlds, working.

 

Death of a Criminal

oh well anyway I am here still
    (passionfruit vine slips over the fence)
you’ve died old and hated in gaol
    after a sociopath murderous career
committing several/knew you when young
    you must have become lost in such
a criminal way after I left
    slipping over the sea lost in my own gone/
when I saw the headline I bought the paper
    no need to read though
the words slip over my fences
    silked and inked
(passionfruit vines/flowers fruitful)
    and whiskey breath a long time long time

 

Revved

she climbed
on that bike a man’s bike
black as danger bike beckoned
her dyke grin as blatant as wanting to die
and revved up her boot heel with all the ardour
of smoke off the road’s surface smell of oil like scent/
there were children at the gates and my own
I left my heart to mind them desisted
oh the same heart’s flutt’ring
skirting around survival
in all its garbs masks
predilections/the revving
mount of expecting peril whether
to wear pearls/disfigurement black motor
bike exhaust smoking against the transparent…

Linda Stevenson is a poet/painter living in Melbourne Australia. Linda considers her poetry as part of her life; it has been a life-long habit, from childhood through to adolescence, adulthood and now into mature older age. In recent years her poems have been published in literature magazines in Australia, UK, USA and Canada. A chapbook “The Tipping Point” was also published in 2015.

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