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Michele Seminara


Epistle to my Paedophile

Doubtless you won’t comprehend
me writing you this way;
for you are harmless 
now, breathing
 
in laboured rasps, your body
neutralised 
by the karmic stroke 
of luck which all the girls 
you might have met
don’t even know 
they should be glad of.
 
I was not so fortunate.
I knew you when your limbs 
still had the power to insinuate 
themselves into Christmas lunch 
and re-calibrate the trajectory 
of uneventful lives.
 
(Strange, I never thought to tell,
the chest of smut beneath your bed,

the dancing doll’s skirt, lifted to reveal --
Or your pudgy hands which turned like moles 
in the incestuous burrows of their pockets,

jingling coins that lured, and repelled…)
 
What a relief it was today to find them stilled.
Pale members, no longer in the service 
of the perverse familial compulsion
which thwarted me, as it did you.
 
Instead, you have become the baby

you once must have been:
helpless (hapless?) in your cot,
as I was, legs akimbo; 
and this is perfect, a perfect way of seeing
because the unsullied space of your mute
presence allows me to impute
whatever version of this I want to --

 
from your side, recognition, remorse;
from mine, forgiveness, love.
 
But I don’t need that now.
We are at peace, you and I,
our transaction complete.
There is no more fear.
 
Only wonder, at how one clot of blood
lodged within a flawed man’s brain
can assuage so much suffering:

what a wise solution, so elegant,
the vessels swollen to bursting 
with compassion for us all --

surely that drop was placed, just so,
by the delicate hand of God.


Subsumed

This peace has been brokered on loss --
or rather — on sundering. Subsumed
in our own crises’ wake 
we drift stupefied.

A surge of relief at arriving at the bottom.
Not striving to stay the fist, or quiet the cries.

But to be still; let chaos
consume itself around you; observe 
dreamlike destruction; close 

your eyes.

Picture

Michele Seminara's profile
 

Stop

Let's leave everything be.
Let's just stop fixing.
Perhaps if we let everyone settle
clarity will be revealed.

Today I entered the cathedral of the bush
-- 
sought permission to walk the land; felt it granted.
Was buoyed by a chorus of cicadas ululating 
their adulation to the Gaia of this world.
(On Facebook a slowed down recording of cicadas —  
oh my, what exaltation! Beyond the range of men.) 

As I traipse through the bush 
in my rag of a dress,
great slobbery dog loping 
at my side, a dishevelled woman 
with hands clasped behind her back
like some unhinged Confucian scholar
-- 

a brown snake crosses my path. 
It's an intimate moment, as if 
he has been waiting for me.
What does one do in such a moment? 
Acknowledge, pass...

Let's leave everything be. 
Let's just stop fixing.

I want to open like that naked flannel-flower to the sun.

Shard

head bowed above
vengeful page
on bare knees kneeling
beside the bed
while charged pen shrieks 
like words could save 

life razing 
and inside cleft chest
my fish-heart left
to desiccate in prayer --
please leave
nothing behind


The Waiting Room

How calming and carefully constructed 
this waiting room is:
I'd like those flannel flowers on my wall.
Classical music playing in the background,
just a little too loud to hear what's being said 

across the hall. 
My daughter's in there telling 
how I maimed her; thwarted her from birth 
through lack of care. The music stops 
me knowing the full story — 
is it coming from

behind that cupboard door? 
Everything about this room seems perfect.
But at its heart bleats an old black radio.
Too scared to turn down the sound
and be found prying,
I wait for the professional 

to resurrect my girl.

Comments?

***

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