Jo Langdon

Jo Langdon lives in Geelong and is currently completing a PhD (creative thesis plus exegesis) in magical realism at Deakin University. She writes poetry and fiction, and was shortlisted for the 2010 Whitmore Press poetry prize.

 

 

 

I’m reminded of a time my mother

chased garlic down my throat with

spoonfuls of jam & honey,

 

ousting a broken fever, her face

stitched tight with worry

over my penicillin allergy.

 

My Dorothy shoes kicked softly

against the polished doors

of the kitchen cupboard.

 

She’d sat my doll body on the bench

hours before, crimping my yellow hair

for the party we left early.

 

This morning, she relates the details of a dream

in which I fall pregnant with six babies,

my stomach filling out like the moon.

 

As a child I complained she never wore

her wedding dress or rings. It took uncounted

years to see how she wears her love.

 

I accepted it from the spoon, counting

cloves that glowed like white-eyed stars

as she wore worry on her wrists,

 

a bracelet of lines, tense as a watch.

 

 

 

 

The is day still with winter,

the water brown & duckless.

 

Before showing stars

the sky turns

 

blue as the pulse

hidden in your wrist.

 

You drive me home &

the lit vein of highway

 

streams with cars like columns

of iridescent ants.

 

The city fills the windscreen,

moves like an aquarium.

 

Lights like neon fish & somewhere

a little plastic castle.

 

I’ll think of how,

sometimes

 

you wear your heart on your face

like a child.

 

Tonight your reflection fills the windows,

holograms the swimming traffic.

 

We assign an easy currency

for thoughts.

 

You ask for mine &

the ones I’ll give you are,

 

stars curled around Earth

in a seashell spiral of galaxy;

 

a little red planet

floating in my eye,

 

& a pond I want to fill

with coat hanger swans.

 

 

 

 

I watch the rain curl

your hair as we spill into

the black river road.

 

Street lamps & taillights

reflect & shimmer like flares

or tropical fish.

 

In the foyer we

lose beads of water to the

salted star carpet.

 

A constellation

beneath our feet: popcorn &

yellow ticket stubs.

 

We communicate

wordlessly; sideways gestures

in the cinema.

 

Pictures on the screen

fall on our skin, colour us

as we crunch candy.