Download PDF Here Live Encounters Poetry & Writing Volume Two Sept-October 2022.
Liquid Crystal, poems by Edward Caruso
Liquid crystal
1
troubled ring, marble-like band
darkens to vermillion before turning cyan
one day to fade
the next deep blue
from turquoise to apricot, streaks of ochre
concealed
marble black, in its box
oblivious to heat, sensitive to touch
porphyry, new-found
colour, immune gold underlay
abandoned to hours
2
in her renditions of Scarlatti’s ‘Sonata for Birds’,
Lizst’s ‘Polonaise 1’
outpourings with a love for ivory keys
an apartment in San Lazzaro di Savena’s hills,
hallway and living room walls
with shelves of artbooks,
hand-painted landscapes
& a portrait of her partner in an ebony shirt
to be with someone
yet live alone
as she plays Ravel’s
‘Don Quichotte à Dulcinée’,
her once marble-like band
out of its box
blazing
Forsaken books
Second-hand bookstore,
shelves over-filled.
Hours forgotten,
except for those tomes
placed back for broken spines,
yellowed pages written over or highlighted lines,
and dreams of pristine leaves.
Dark windows replete with faded
covers, old versions of updated works,
proprietors with greying hair
immersed in volumes
outliving former owners and their tastes,
another shelf to be stacked, contents
picked up, relived.
The hankerings of forsaken books –
to not be mislaid in refuse,
stained, torn, eaten by bookworms
or replaced by e-texts.
Core
Solitude the open space
of movement each second of a corolla’s
opening
Within flight
a stillness that could
always be here but mistaken
for an escapade that slumber
never drifts from
Neighbourhood
After the rains withdraw,
puddles linger on ploughed fields
and a road being built over a paddock
stripped of weeds and pines.
The earthmovers’ monotony,
what’s brought up shakes loose,
carried by the thud of a drainpipe
hitting what’s left of a riverbed.
A trail of slush along a waterway,
one endless ditch across the surface.
The breeze in overhead pines
some kind of soft chatter;
beyond, pirouettes
of earthmovers and bulldozers,
they halt in that moment called twilight.
Colosseum
Orange sun lost behind traffic.
Actors in centurion’s garb
ready for the cameras of a perfume ad.
© Edward Caruso
Edward Caruso is based in Melbourne, Australia. Publications where his work can be found include: A Voz Limpia, Australian Multilingual Writing Project, ‘La Bottega della Poesia’ (La Repubblica, Italy), Burrow, Communion, Live Encounters, Mediterranean Poetry, Meniscus, StylusLit, TEXT, Unusual Work and Well-Known Corners: Poetry on the Move. He has work forthcoming with Burrow and Kalliope X. His second collection of poems, Blue Milonga, was published by Hybrid Publishers in January 2019.