Poetry

Lucy Van

Young Teazer

a welder’s turn: when you came the first Mrs. X was the bride; turns you something unfaithful; keeps your powder dry and your consort clad in bluenose elegy; there’s the envelope that keeps the minute that keeps you, you that turns to everyone (there’s a window; there’s a quaker; there’s a minute); the sudden noise alarms you, as usual, revealing a perfectly maintained bedroom: a hairbrush, a gauze, the sea,

oh here in the forge: an index of the first scene from work that was by all accounts extremely private but not too removed from what is still called welding; preventing a war was it or holding an action in an event in a position in a source (was it) that could at any rate be neutralised; vile prepositions! capable of a good hold; an index of stackable events in order to conclude what, remain in situations; then no remains; then a flirty address book filled with pronouns and citations and discoveries and timecards and officers and envelopes and yes, scenes; everyone in this scene turns; rants unsemantic essays; oh hey! your first epigraph; hey, the third strophe! marry here; you want to see the accounts,

you want to marry here; or even here, if the stars (yes, the stars) read: Roman poetry! Hairspray rolls in your briefcase. In your briefcase! the enamel mug is too hot; or you say, no: actually I don’t think so: I’m gonna roll you; whether it was violent or not I or you could not mais touchez pas encore; multiple times the officer writes the word ‘images’; or so I suppose; every citation the discovery knocked back by the wrench; multiple times the officer writes the word ‘lining’; the god of unwanted advances, counterparts; your address in a proleptic position; the envelope is scrawled in Roman; the word is ‘proscenium’:

your notebook flares
your sea grief
you notebook
you sea grief
you not
you no
you note
you sea
you notesea
your seagrief
your notebook flares

what kind of dastardly pastoral has no precedent? what kind of material resurfaces? rhymes with thrones; a haptic voyage full of greetings and turns; everyone says so; everyone is notified because it is everyone’s turn (everyone it is your turn); lamentation stepped on salt; my mind has whirled at a whole past tuning itself; a whole past turning itself; to the word ‘lining’; I should think so; I should have thought; so should you go sink or go mad; this could be said to spread into other events and multiple times an officer will be notified; I presume. I was in a wry habit of mind when I made that mark; it curves near the word ‘precedent’,

(and death ought to have some dominion, and the sea is always a mask), the rest is in the fugue: ‘Why did you say that? I closed it before I left the room. You opened it yourself, didn’t you?’; didn’t you? you second: ghost fugue the lining; welding with real bones

Lucy Van writes poetry and criticism. She is currently a research associate at the University of Melbourne where she is completing a monograph on postcolonial poetry. Her first poetry collection is, The Open (Cordite 2021).