Live Encounters Poetry & Writing March 2025
Three Poems by Scott-Patrick Mitchell.
After the marine ecologist visits her school,
my daughter recreates dinner time in the deep
My daughter embodies the breath of life.
On the beach, she is recreating whale fall.
I laugh and clap at her pantomime’s drama
as sea denizens come out to dine and feast.
On the beach, she is recreating whale fall.
She begins to understand how death begets birth.
The sea denizens come out to dine and feast,
make plans to raise a family of their own.
She begins to understand how death starts birth.
The food pulse sparks aquatic love and fish
make plans to raise a family of their own.
“Eggs cost a lot to make, the scientist said.”
The food pulse sparks aquatic love and fish
and squid court and kiss and spawn the dark.
“Eggs cost a lot to make, the scientist said.”
How a nautilus will sacrifice food for kids.
And squid court and kiss and spawn the dark:
she mimics this with flat palms, wiggling arms.
How a nautilus will sacrifice food for kids,
carry their child’s name on their thinning lips.
She mimics this with flat palms, wriggling arms.
I laugh and clap at her pantomime’s drama.
I carry my child’s name on my thinning lips:
my daughter embodies the breath of my life.
Surfing is just like riding a poem
At Ocean Reef, a bitumen plateau: carpark levitates
above the beach. On to the harbour, waves break.
You are driving night, searching dark for a poem,
car curved north, following the coast up, heaven-
ward, when you pull in here, full moon a lyric
writing light across foam symmetry of night’s sea.
Startled, you stop: half a dozen cars face the sea.
On top of each are cross-legged youths, levitating
in the thrall of ember passed along, smoke, a lyric
curling beams as if a surfer rode a steep wave’s break.
As you arrive, they all turn. You interlope this heaven
of their hideaway. They’re divining aqua for a poem
that will sing them out into the wide wet poem
of life’s ocean. Their jeeps and vans are sea
stained: they follow coastal currents, seeking heaven
amid spume. They know how a board, as if praying, levitates
on wings made from salt, barrelling toward a break.
Blessed inside their neoprene, their bodies shape lyric’s
stance. Gathered, at night, they seek the lyric
inside the joints they share, their ramblings a poetry
of giggle. You feel like Johnny Utah in Point Break,
narc amid the cool kids in their holy site. They see
you cruising curb, looking to park. Anxiety levitates
in your blood. A comet scars an arc across heaven
and you all look up. There, stars scribble heaven
with myths more ancient than any of the old lyrics
our pop stars sing. See how the low moon levitates
and illuminates, and you, a poet chasing a poem,
stop to chat. They welcome you, share their sea
tales, show you how to read the waves that break
and you inhale, deep, the salt air. Laughter breaks
the nerves inside of you. A surfer called Heaven
explains how, for now, they are augurs of the sea,
paying homage to thalassic energy, moon’s lyric,
the shifting tide. She tells you that surfing is a poem
you write in foot work, instinct and wax: so you levitate,
you learn to conquer the sea by riding roll and break.
You lean in, let go, levitate. You thank Heaven
for the gift of her lyric, and ink her skill into poem.
a life is made of 600 million breaths,
unless you have a breathing tic
i.
we measure life in numbers the increment & countdown,
a moving toward that reduces all the ways we
diminish ourselves in the addition of digits equalling life more
or less but when we add a disability to the equation
a different math evolves of a body as outlying integer,
just as brilliant a being magnificent: we are the proof
ii.
with baseball bats & petrol they beat my breath broken,
rewired lung into panic attack tics a static black full
body recollection where walls collapse & the roof of my ribs
caving mouth a funnel grasping air sharply a hard huff out
so that i joke & apologise say i’m a coffee machine, percolating
but the punchline is this: a decade later & i’m still here trapped
iii.
when i walk the coast i match breath to the length of a leg
striding to make the most of isolation not a soul about
& i can quell the ragged to cope, waves’ metronome
a steady stroke, gull’s swoop & there is no murmuration
in my throat, this place sacred for making focus slow, swallowed,
the sand reaching up to engulf: i forget my breath, move onward
iv.
i imagine the bats are bouquets & the bruises come from petal
caress, the stink of fuel, lavender oil, anointing me, the spit slurs
affirmations, holy, & in this act of reinvention, the breath catches
on the corner of smiled lips the past ten years a pilgrimage
i am returning from, feet swollen, air in my chest reclaimed: this works
for a while & one day, it might loosen trauma free–until then, keep counting
© Scott-Patrick Mitchell
Scott-Patrick Mitchell is a WA-based queer non-binary poet who lives on Whadjuk Noongar Country. They were the recipient of 2022’s Red Room Poetry Fellowship, Westerly’s 2022 Mid-Career Fellowship and the 2023 winner of The XYZ Prize for Innovation in Spoken Word. Their debut poetry collection Clean (Upswell Publishing, 2022) explores Mitchell’s lived experience as a methamphetamine addict and was shortlisted for The Prime Minister’s Literary Awards, The WA Premier’s Book Awards, The Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards and internationally in The Read Rainbow’s Best LGBTIQA+ Books of 2022 Awards. Mitchell is currently completing their second poetry collection which explores the parallel between the fragile ecosystem of the marine park Perth Canyon and the fragility of the houseless crisis (which Mitchell experienced as an addict) taking place in WA’s coastal car parks.