Live Encounters Poetry & Writing April 2026
Reliquary, poems by Denise O’Hagan.
Reliquary
The elderly couple enter
quietly. Her arm is tucked into his, and they cross
the floor steady as snails after the rain, pausing neither
at the lone woman crooning
before traces of the torment of the damned,
scratching at herself gently with her painted nails, nor
before a flushed Virgin in prayer
buoyed by a choir of androgynous angels
halfway to heaven,
or even at the child working the zip
in a tourist’s handbag by the melancholy light
of a hundred candles,
until they reach the side chapel
where the chipped tooth of the Saint is hanging
by a golden chain from the top of a cage
where, fingers raised to the glass, they stand
as one, immobile, polishing its ivory with
their passionate gaze—
Death of a goldfish
She stood silent in the shadow of the doorway,
school bag plummeting to the floor.
At eight, the shape of shock was globular, airy and inert.
Emptied of its golden occupant, the bowl had lost all meaning.
Later there would be a burial,
a small mound at the road’s edge, a pinecone for a headstone,
a lily if she could find one—otherwise, wildflowers.
Two gelato sticks, wiped clean of sticky residue,
rubber-banded together to make a cross.
How easily it would slide into crumbled rain-soft loam,
make its home in the sunken city of roots,
below a congregation of clouds.
Snowfall
The woman in the fur-trimmed coat and boots
climbs the steps of the apartment. Her gloved hand
is resting on the doorknob as he trudges past.
He never really knew who she was anyway.
There he goes, the dark smudge of his overcoat
traversing the yolk of lamplight. She pushes the bedroom
window shut again: the edges of him fade, vanish.
The street feels different now.
The snow falls more heavily, covering the footpath,
filling in the curved dips left by the man’s footprints.
The creak of the old wooden window sash
flies away in the wind
the same wind that further on, later on, brushes
the man’s cheek as he pushes himself on to where
he believes he is going.
© Denise O’Hagan
Denise O’Hagan is a Sydney-based editor and poet, born in Rome. She has a background in academic publishing in London and Sydney, and is poetry editor with The Marrow. Her third poetry collection, What the Mirror Tells, is forthcoming with 5 Islands Press (2026). Her awards include the Dalkey Poetry Prize, the Monica Taylor Poetry Prize and the NSW Poetry Prize.
Web links to published work:
Anamnesis: Anamnesis – RECENT WORK PRESS
The Beating Heart: The Beating Heart – Ginninderra Press