Bronwen Manger

Bronwen Manger is a poet from the outer east of Melbourne. She has performed her work on television and radio, and her poems have appeared in journals, zines, anthologies and The Age newspaper. When Bronwen is not writing, she attends poetry readings around Melbourne and works as a research assistant.

The Scream

Tonight we poise & pace

into some offhand orange dayfall,

take the air & every war

is truced now lest one distant gun

outdraw our footsteps or the hush

of wind on bay. Dear, we are

acquitted from the thwarted roil

of all before this pier. This jury

finds us glorious, all

side-by-side without a wince

of doubt to twang the seagulls’

songs to mockery. Dear, this

blotted earth is beauty yet,

is Eden still. The fraught tumult

of yesterday flutters from

our calendar as the hills

& shore wash into darkness,

landscaped peace like picture stone.

Dearest speak, tell me

how the water clasps

the light beyond its daily term;

& which vaunted feet have sung

their story ‘cross these

wooden keys before. Tell me

where we’ll wake ensconced

as morning ribbons through

our panes. And Dearest

who is that screaming behind us?

How I Sold My Soul

It was not some lamé devil’s incendiary ballpoint; nor

the oilslick eyes of any quintessential executive. Death

did not unfurl immortality for me in a rickety burlesque.

Neither genies spilling from streetlights nor fairies

sweeping back their leaf-litter coats did it.

There was no parchment, no

scales, no star-keyed

cosmic cash

register.

No.

It was the

beach, mostly. The

sun swaying through the

shallows; bright wind in its salt

finery; hopscotch with driftwood, a hundred

thousand shells in colours to confound paint.

Yes, it was that old hijacked wrung muse the beach

that did it – and how to get back there. My sold soul I

carry with me now, laid-away, waiting. And a pocket

full of sand, spilling graciously and interminably.

Four Mississippis

I held you for

four Mississippis

when we last said goodnight.

You were brighter than

all the lights of the city

as you slipped from my sight.

I was washed away

by those four Mississippis;

I was carried out to sea.

Now writing this

lonely little ditty

couldn’t express what you mean to me.

I want to hold you for

more Mississippis;

hold you for

more than a while.

I want to hold you for

four hundred Mississippis,

twenty Ganges,

ten Euphrates,

and the Nile.