Stefanie Bennett- Three Poems

WINTER OFFENSIVE 2014          

 

It must be The Night

Of The Long Knives

For there’s

 

Fate’s arduous wolf

In the thicket –,

 

A hundredweight bone-chill

Half moon –,

 

Boot-heels fracturing

The desensitised dusk and

 

An obsidian Manticore

Sartrean shack

 

I’ve come upon that

Distantly

Looks like

                Home.

 

 

 

KAFKA EPILOGUE         

 

There is no train –.

There is no station –.

The stopping point

... It’s beyond recall.

 

Yet, there was a house.

A lamp. A window

Through which

The forest

                Entered

 

...Following

A sky-rail

And tomorrow’s

Prophetic

 

Swan-song.

 

 

 

AFTER VASCO POPA         

 

Once there was a frown, acceptable

As a frown can be.

 

It never caught sight of itself;

 

It stopped cybernetics at their play;

 

It transgressed so well the maps

  Of the world rearranged them-

  Selves into globular rigidity.

 

The doctors operated on the maps

  Trying not to be apprehensive...

 

The village officialdom bought the idea

  Of tub-thumping maps,

  And squaring globes...

 

Once there was a frown, so the story

  Goes. It hasn’t

  An ending

 

It’s still not... acceptable.

 

 

 

Stefanie Bennett has published eighteen books of poetry and one novel. She has acted as a publishing editor and worked with Arts Action for Peace. Of mixed ancestry [Italian/Irish/Paugussett-Shawnee], she was born in Queensland, Australia, in 1945. Her latest poetry title ‘The Vanishing’ is due at year’s end. Publisher, Walleah Press.