December: fourW – the annual anthology of new writing published ‘After the Surgery’
fourW is one of Australia’s longest running (and best…) annual anthologies of new poetry and prose from Australian and international writers.
After the surgery
1.
In the morning
the girl who brings the tray
hopes the rain will
fill her tanks.
Later,
two cleaners
mopping round my bed
swap anecdotes
on snakes and bushfires.
At night
a nurse drops the water jug
and swears.
I feel the current
of their words
flow round me,
the loving arms
of Endone
weigh me down
for now.
Like the salmon and the gudgeon
I’m preparing to leap upstream
towards the daylight.
2. Those nights
held captive
by machine whirr and beep
she comes to me
my mother
that 1930s nurse
in starched white veil and smile
rechecking all my charts.
Breathe in love
and
breathe out fear.
3. The day I came home
from hospital
I watched a honeyeater
swinging upside down,
feasting on bottlebrush.
How fine the line between
disintegration
and euphoria.
