Live Encounters Poetry & Writing 16th Anniversary Volume Four
November- December 2025
Saturday Afternoon, poems by Jane Downing.
Saturday Afternoon
I
He leaves the lawn mower running while he makes the call
She will not know he’s down the side on his gambling app
away from the engine’s roar
And he does not know why he does it
– five minutes of pleasure and ten of regret –
with twenty three and three quarter hours
left to a monotonous drone
II
She is veiled behind the Venetians her misery
lost to puke and shit
the child at her breast suckling blood
bawling while she grits her teeth
She’s flicking through channels of ifs, shoulds, coulds
hanging onto the normality of the mown lawn
to keep her breathing
III
Next door the old man’s death is stalking
Unmown grass and dandelion sores invade
the edges of his dreams between
Meals On Wheels/Home Care/Community Nursing
– the scaffolding of his crumbling life easy to dismantle
He awakens to the engine roar through the open window
clings doesn’t want to go life he fears precious
after all
Funeral Words
There are no words, we say
using words to say it
meaning, we cannot now
find the right words
as they play hide and seek
with grief
Sorrow and rage
blow up the tracks
of these funeral conversations
working first in tandem
taking turns
to tie the tongue
Prayers and gods
banished – new platitudes
yet to come
Abandoned Architecture
empty rooms
ivy sneaking through cracks
in the brickwork
stains leaked from fissures
in the cornices – those
skirting boards set up high
cupboard doors fallen open
contents mulched
on the tessellated Victorian tiles
shelves left fly-spotted
and cockroach pooped
ghost prints on the walls
wanton graffiti
passing for romance
broken dreams
lost stories no one can reclaim
and a premonition
in the spray of diamond glass
each facet a mirror
to the vacant-window sky
© Jane Downing
Jane Downing’s poems have appeared at home and overseas including in Meanjin, Rabbit, Cordite, Canberra Times, Not Very Quiet, Social Alternatives, e.ratio, Last Stanza, Best Australian Poems, and previously in Live Encounters. In 2025 she won the NSW Poetry Prize. Her collection, ‘When Figs Fly’ (Close-Up Books) was published in 2019.