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Thylazine: The Australian Journal of Arts, Ethics & Literature                                                                                                                                   #9/thyla9k-mb AUSTRALIAN POETS SERIES 9 The Poetry of Magdalena Ball Selected by Coral Hull [Above] Photo of Magdalena Ball by photographer unknown, 2004. I Sleeping Dogs I Solitaire I After the Rain I Body Language I Diamond I Whorl I Sleeping Dogs Let sleeping dogs lie Let the night go by Once, twice Or twenty times I pass by your body Heavily curled Blanketed by your own funk Let the curtains blow in As the rain falls And you roll over snoring I pace the boards Trying not to creak Keeping everyone else quiet So you can continue to flay yourself in nightmares and self-accusations Baby on one shoulder Two boys on the other I become a scale Holding the balance Looking emptily into the darkness Sore and shaky from the load tamping the emotion swallowing exhaustion like laudanum like tumbler after tumbler of your whisky while I wonder but never ask why when everything is perfect as it will ever be you aren't happy. Solitaire Did you wake up one morning beer cans, guitar, cowboy boots your tarnished armour scattered about the ground throw off the covers and look for him? The boy you left bundled up with your domestic mistakes your false dreams of normalcy turned prison. Did you see his eyes in the mirror and feel the abandonment yourself a child again alone, facing the second half of your life without noise without distraction the umbilical cord cut forever. Would he know you in the street? In his next life? In the hereafter? Or are you truly playing solitaire. Published in Long Story Short (USA). AFTER THE RAIN When they cut the noose his twitching body lay emptied of meaning in her lap. Colder than it had ever been. While the rain fell. A thousand tears. Washing the blood And pain. When they cut the ties The train pulled out of the station Conductor's whistle ending finally Their union Those fragile vows Pebbles Beneath the metal tracks. She stood alone In the clink click Of disappearing wheels While the rain fell. A thousand tears. Washing the blood And pain. When they cut the cake Another year gone Blue eyes full of illusions Three generations of Loss and gain Life and death He dreams of a convict past Alone in his small cot And wakes in innocence A rainbow before his small face Redorangeyellowgreenblueindigoviolet A thousand tears A thousand lives Washing the blood And pain. Published in Moca Memoirs (USA). Body Language If I could reach Into my heart Fingers caressing the veins And arteries Past ventricles and valves Into the steaming depths Of my chest And bring out something beating To give you You might know What my hapless words fail at Every time I open my mouth Every time I write In poorly coupled rhymes Strained rhythms And loaded cliches. If I could tear off my skin Peeling layers of derma from the surface Until there was only bone You might see beauty The delicate structure of my devotion So I reach and pull, tear and peel Hands out Holding something Which I hope will reveal truth Its form purified by pain and blood Open my palm And find it empty. Published in The Harpweaver (Canada). Diamond Dedication You came and went so quickly I could hardly taste the chocolaty trail you left those syrupy words dripping into my hallucinations. I wanted to leave you there unexplained untouched And never talk to you again. Except for those times I lick my lips and swallow your silvery wake nighttime smoke like the longing felt for someone dead. Published in Bird Before Landing (Australia). Whorl From this point everything begins. He comes out crying No need for a smack. Eyes wide, fighting the light and shock. Slippery, red, and incredibly solid. From this point it all begins. The whorl, where superfine hair grows like one of those spiral galaxies. Andromeda or Triangulum. Full of stars and the promise of real life. Different from anything we have known, but starting at the same point. Published in The Uncontained Sea (Australia). About the Poet Magdalena Ball Magdalena Ball has been writing professionally for over 20 years. She graduated Summa Cum Laude from CCNY (New York) with a BA in English Literature. She also studied English literature and business at a postgraduate level at Oxford University in the UK and Charles Sturt University in Australia and has an MBA. She has been published in magazines within Australia and through the world and is the author of The Art of Assessment: How to Review Anything, and The Literary Lunch: Recipes For a Hungry Mind. Magdalena is a staff writer at E2K and Editor-In-Chief of The Compulsive Reader (Book Reviews) and Preschool Entertainment web sites and is a manuscript assessor for Catchfire Press, a small publishing house.    [Above] Photo of Magdalena Ball by photographer unknown, 2004. I Next I Back I Exit I Thylazine No.9 (March, 2004)