Alison J Barton
April 2, 2025 / mascara / 0 Comments
Alison J Barton is a Wiradjuri poet based in Melbourne. Themes of race relations, Aboriginal-Australian history, colonisation, gender and psychoanalytic theory are central to her poetry. She was the inaugural winner of the Cambridge University First Nations Writer-in-Residence Fellowship and received a Varuna Mascara Residency. Her debut collection, Not Telling is published by Puncher and Wattmann. www.alisonjbarton.com / Instagram @alison_j_barton
Mirror
|
my mother was a bear that couldn’t walk itself |
her reside a sulking weight I trailed |
|
|
grief hauled from under the volume of her |
my reflection, an infancy of sound-gathering |
|
|
|
|
like an instrument archiving its vibrations |
I stored language for both of us |
|
|
tooled it to fill her gaps |
we bore the cacophony as one |
|
|
|
|
she arranged its tenors |
woefully concrete, stalkingly anchored |
|
|
the shape of me lined with benevolent deceit |
her indebted angel-monster |
|
|
at the door she would cant, hoping it might open |
night would plummet and I would flinch |
|
|
breathe in what had been committed |
abandoning her in the light |
|
|
words formed and stuck to the back of my throat |
when I measured her |
|
|
I got an elliptical question that reinforced our wounds |
petrified its answerer |
|
|
steeped into the matter of things |
staining the passage |
|
|
some are lost learning to speak |
some have voices that shake walls |
|
|
fill quiet rooms |
but the reprise, the inverted translation |
|
|
desecrated us together |
|
|
we needed to finish like this |
|
|
with an aching acid chest |
marched to an absolute |
|
|
now I am emptying my mother |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
#Issue 30