The Return

I return to my city, search in the cafe of La Alameda, the young hand holding a wine glass, his gaze distant and inward.

I return to my city where every adolescent resembles the one I knew so well but never knew, nor understood the consuming flame burning his wings of moth, the mystery of strings holding back his grasshopper legs propelled by fire.

I return to my city, cross a whole ocean to hear his voice in the evening news, a local station discussing his work, those documentaries of life in Africa, savannah, desert, lakes, wilderness, his love for open skies, and I remember exactly when those fraying strings were cut on that summer night when I said, I couldn’t be sure, perhaps it wasn’t love, but plain desire, and he said, desire is never plain.

Lorraine Gibson is a Scottish Australian poet and writer living in regional Australia. In 2023 she was shortlisted for the Calanthe Press Poetry Prize. Since retiring from her work as a Cultural Anthropologist she has been drawn to writing poetry. Her poetry appears or is upcoming in: Meniscus, The Galway Review, Hecate, Eureka St, Prole, Live Encounters, Backstory, Brushstokes III, Poetry for The Planet, Booranga FourW, Book of Matches, Tarot, Last Stanza, and others. Lorraine has a PhD. in Anthropology from Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. Her book, ‘We Don’t Do Dots: Aboriginal Art and Culture in Wilcannia, New South Wales’ is published in the UK by Sean Kingston Press.

Antidote for Lost Love

Clearing out our house, I sorted through the tartan biscuit tin full of old photographs. I asked the ether, Was I not enough?

At the markets, I scanned a selection of fresh biscuits—some were honied and dark.

I took the type I fancied home—licked thick smooth chocolate from the underside of a new kind of biscuit. It wasn’t long before the tartan-tin was replenished. Thus satisfied, I discovered life offers many variations of black and white.

Trevor M. Landers has been widely published in NZ and aboard, He hopes to reprise his 2004 volume, To Rômania with Love to mark the twentieth anniversaruy. His next edited anthology called Ngā Pūrehu Kapohau (The Spinning Turbines) will be launched on 24 March 2024. He is following it up with a similar survey of another part of the province of Taranaki.