Stefanie Bennett- Two Poems

 

HONOUR CYCLE      

 

For Beauty’s sake... I ask...

What is it you want!

Unlike mine – your world

Has been formed

Into a hapless self-image

With a viperous hiss

That is

The hire-purchasing

Of Earth’s heaven

Swallowing itself tail-up.

 

When I hear the Kestrel’s sirening loss

In the back-streets

Of tomorrow

Venting over me

In dreams more

Ruinous

Than war, than pestilence...

When the pre-cursed

Supreme light

Sobs into the Sky-blanket

 

I want to gather the orphaned stars

And make of them

My heartfelt

Artillery.

The last of the innocents,

I pray, will

Come join me.

Dying for Beauty

Eliminates

The ‘want’ of it.

 

 

[First published: ‘Woman of Straw’

chapbook]

 

 

 

OWING IT ALL     

 

They talk of corn – Caribbean blue;

Tri-gold; matt-white.

Geordie, Tipperary Tigress

Astride her Sun-kissed Veil.

Vittoria, immigrant; mother

To five at eighteen light years -

And Melissa, stately in deer-hide

Polishing a Nation’s bloodstone.

 

“You are the husk of our Dawn Star,”

They intone. “You are what’s

Left of the coup.”

 

                      I am the Straw Woman

                      Cross-stitching

                      My own eyelids

                      - Where

                      The bone-walk’s

                      One half octagon

                      Away.

 

 

[‘Woman of Straw’ chapbook]

 

 

 

Stefanie Bennett has published several volumes of poetry and worked with Arts Action

for Peace. Her poems appear in The Fib Review, Shot Glass Journal, Jellyfish Whispers,

Poetry Pacific etc. Of mixed heritage [Irish/Italian/Paugussett-Shawnee], she was born in

Queensland, Australia, in 1945. Stefanie’s latest poetry book “The Vanishing” 2015, is

published by Walleah Press and is available at Walleah Press, Amazon and Fishpond.