We publish quality short stories, poetry, extracts from forthcoming novels, and articles and essays on topics of social, environmental and cultural significance.ISSUE NO. 109
WINTER 2007
POETRY
Joel Deane
Archimedes’ Principle
A marriage is only as good as its equivocations:
the half-truths, mixed messages, elegant evasionsthat inflate our chest cavities, buoy us with helium;
make our chipmunk voices squeal in deliriumas we ascend, two weather balloons in wedlock,
to the thin upper atmosphere above the bedrockof our, and every other balloon’s, backyard graveyard plot;
until our sunburnt skins tighten, and, one-by-one, we pop.
JOEL DEANE is a poet and novelist. His latest book is Subterranean Radio Songs (Interactive Press, 2005)
ELIZABETH CAMPBELL
Structure of the Horse’s Eye
WINNER: 2006 GWEN HARWOOD POETRY PRIZE
Under the sun, the horse’s eye
is a glass dome over a petal, the pupil a raised bud
of pollinated velvet, bisected;
the horizon in it. Almost 360 –
a narrow corridor behind
and one spot in front of her nose are blind.Curious about the wolf? Find a fat horse
grazing at dozy noon her home paddock;
try to creep up.In the waking night her eyes are flat opals
bouncing your torch as you pan the black
like a river for green-gold flakes,
or better; go sightless to hear
the known rhythm coming out the dark.
Within, the tapetum, mirrorlike, reflects all
available light back through her retina –
she watches on her feet. Homo sapiens,
one of few mammals lacking this useful aid
to nocturne, mostly sleeps.
Sometimes a night visit sets them off –
swilling around you like surf in a tide pool
pushing the long bones
of their heads at you. The honest creature
investigates with her face, magnolia
nostrils cupping the scent
of palms up empty at arm’s length. Your image
shone back on the convex surface of the eye-pool
is macrocephalic, duck-billed, your skull
a helpless baby too heavy for itself.
If you want to better love the world,
ask counsel of those who never come inside;
her order, perissodactyla
(large mammals with odd-numbered toes)
have largely failed: she is a remnant.
Taxonomy progresses, dividing its names. Sometimes a life
pressing on, proves its point
but Life does not. Let her advance –
she is herself, through flowering heads; eyes careful,
thinking nothing of advancement, above lips
tough enough to strip the exquisite nettle-crown
from its armoured stem. How excellent is her tail!
She draws all grass
through the bone-set strata of her teeth,
grazing twelve hours in her open-lidded present –
deep time made one dimension
by limited depth perception, wide world
made pasture and shelter. Let her head’s long neck
lift to her clear-edged ear
whose hearing threads in darkness the Earth
to its sky. Let her steady herbivorous day
blink open and consume and close it all.
ELIZABETH CAMPBELL was born in Melbourne in 1980. Her poetry has been published widely in Australia, notably in Best Australian Poetry 2006 and in New Music: an Anthology of Contemporary Australian Poetry. She has almost finished her first collection of poems, Letters to the Tremulous Hand. She has worked as a waiter, a florist, a horseriding instructor, and currently teaches English and Literature at Eltham High School in Melbourne. She has one horse and one cat.
Island, PO Box 210, Sandy Bay, Tasmania 7006 Australia
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E-mail: island.magazine@utas.edu.au