Poem 195

Snapshot of my departed writing partner mourning a romantic disappointment sometime in the 80s when she was living in her Roxburgh St flat behind BATS theatre …

… I’d read something saying there was so little knowledge of the life-cycle of the Great White that it was possible they might live for hundreds even a thousand years … the Brighton story was also a real newspaper article …

Her Great Love

The great love in Rebecca has been dying
      all week
                     her bed is full of the wreckage
her love comes belly up to the surface
like a shark for all we know
                                                a thousand years old
she reads absurdities in the paper
a rioting crowd of deaf mutes
on Brighton Beach
                                  sighs
wraps her great love
in the story stuffs it
in the bin

she looks out
                         the hope of love
drives people continuously
past the window

and they're dogfish compared to her