INNOCENCE

by Jo-Ella Sarich

Credit: Jorge Silva/Reuters via Aljazeera

You were
the bawdy older sister; we thought we were
coquettish, the fish
on the end of the hook. Your tears
were a map traced upon the backs of doors; the other land
of someone else’s pain. I count the seagulls
carving new wounds across my eyelids -
30; 40; 49; someone said ‘terrorist’,
and our world shifted
just that fraction like a coin flipped. Now this mirror,
now this dress that
makes my thighs look like the Port Hills
at dusk and you hold me,
for just a moment and say,
I know what it means
to bleed inside. Some say
Aoraki’s feet are awash in his tears; some say
tears are just the ties that bind us. Men are
shouting in loud voices while our parents
are in bed; in summer we shook, now
we stand still. You call me, the one
who taught me how to count
with both hands and I try and
imagine how you feel
in Orlando right now, holding a lock
of my baby hair and praying,
Is nothing ever sacred?

Jo-Ella Sarich is a lawyer, writer, and mother to two young girls living in Pito-one, Aotearoa New Zealand. Her poems have appeared in a number of print and online publications, including New Statesman, The Lake, Cleaver Magazine, Barzakh Magazine, Quarterday Review, Shoreline of Infinity, takahē magazine, Shot Glass Journal, the New Zealand Poetry Society’s Anthology for 2017 and the Poetry New Zealand Yearbook 2017.

LINES FROM A QUIET ISLAND

by David Mason

Sydney Morning Herald, March 24, 2017

When you have left, beginning to look back,

you can see everything they covered up,

the iron of neighborhood, the layered hates.

Men go armed to market. They do not talk,

though lips move, emitting sounds like fists.

The commentators say the nation’s mad

yet too few get up from a chair and move.

There are no pitchforks, torches at the gates,

and all the lowered eyes look very sad.

The statues might have warned us this could happen,

those noble men accustomed to their slaves,

those domes and obelisks and public greens.

Now an island lies at peace in a southern sea

with well-kept paddocks, trees of cockatoos,

the stirring of a clerk in the bottle shop.

Here monuments, like peoples’ homes, are small.

You set out never wanting to look back.

You do look back. You look and try to breathe.

And if you think you’ve found your perfect island,

think further to what you do not see or hear.

There hasn’t been a change in human nature.

Here too the ammunition clip has clicked

crisply into the automatic rifle.

So quiet you can hear dead children scream.

David Mason is an American poet living in Tasmania.