‘Settlement’ and other poems by Lizz Murphy

$600   Here for $600 you can buy a purebred Siberian husky pup a digital display microwave a proheat all rounder vacuum a freestanding cooker a mini laptop a man’s bike barely used There for $600 you can buy a 12 year-old girl not used at all © Lizz Murphy — from Six Hundred Dollars (PressPress 2010)   Through a Child’s Eyes   She is a child whose play eyes settle on the fine grains sweetly falling through sugar fingers She is a child whose factory eyes settle on a shatter of sequins like falling fire or a stitched up sky When night settles one girl will close her eyelids the other will want to tear hers off Here a forest will grow each leaf a child’s eye © Lizz Murphy   — previously published in Cordite Poetry Review #43 Masque — from Shebird (PressPress forthcoming)   The Morrigan   The Morrigan’s throat-hackles riffle air her baneful call forewarning strife cordoning off territory She hitches up her raven lips her tongue and gum reckoning Her wrap is a fox a skulking road I know something of this woman Her black river sheen one fallen feather a bowl of brine She is the washer at the ford The fetters are cast The other bird on its back wings extended in abdication Its arching neck its thrashing bill its adversary treading liver I unwrite my skin a black crow underscore I know this line this unravelling line two cups of blood one foot on either side of the river © Lizz Murphy — previously published Abridged: Torquemada   Settlement   That settlement on the lowland the noise of them chittering and squawking Those single-note whistles sucked back unutterables everyone scattering One so much less agitated sailing wings draped like arms around someone else’s half-hearted shoulders legs trailing absentminded the feet chewed stick ends The choughs flap and stretch nettled silk each fan-fold a clearly outlined breath Two magpies flee to another patch the first knows its song well the other repeats her last phrase on a seven second delay like someone who can’t contain thought or an unacquainted tongue And then the falcon flaunting his high authority the rearing sun his silver edged wingspan limbs extended his binding decision his bite to the spine © Lizz Murphy — previously published Rabbit: A Journal of Non-Fiction Poetry   Myth Breaker   She knew instinctively when she was twelve saw it in his eyes at fifteen was middle-aged before she understood what it was she knew what it was she had witnessed It was that country of not knowing that they colonized   Blackbird   Bushlark hands empty swirl and rinse fresh-baked terracotta I hear the slide of leaves as olive residue separates reveals fine scarlet threads Here I am with a worriment I tell anyone listening in the hills collapsing into themselves The adult rosellas have parasites They are snips of red cotton the sweepings after dressmaking The unsewn moments of this warm loose-mouthed afternoon Earlier we heard the blackbird playing flutes from the spire of its conifer cathedral That melodic intruder its precise tangerine beak scissoring at the sky And the raiding currawongs with their priestly wings and hook-beak frenzy Sweetmeat hatchlings the tear of earth the choir of keening magpies Then the silent flyover Younger red-green natives captured only in the surprise of transitory shapes Swift tattoos across sparse lawn the grey grill of grevillea the ridged roof robust in all seasons its iron whisperings coaxing in a cold front How long till the blackbird is back foraging finding invertebrates in undergrowth shrinking into itself How long since a fledgling its feathers the stain of tended soil runs an unsteady length of broken board Or a juvenile flying the shortest of spans flagging gutter to slumping branch And game again on the verandah launches itself in a gay splatter Its stiff limbs like poking fingers its panting spotted breast pressing a path through space First empty nest then empty distance You recognize the wind of chance in their jubilant eyes They are full of the new life have found their own un-compassed way Just like you told them they would Like you told them they should It has caught my generation short the skin of it settling over the migratory pass Streamflows knotting around long unmoving stones shucking their occupant souls together They have the vacant knock of brass The bell strike of hammer on nail The scuff of spade entering sod The rasp of the smallest of the deaths © Lizz Murphy — from Walk the Wildly (Picaro Press 2011; reprint: Ginninderra Press, forthcoming)

Lizz Murphy has published 12 books of different kinds. Her seven poetry titles include Portraits: 54 Poems and Six Hundred Dollars (PressPress), Walk the Wildly (Picaro), Stop Your Cryin (Island) and Two Lips Went Shopping (Spinifex). Recent poems can be found online in Abridged (Ire), Blue Pepper, Cordite Poetry Review, Right Now, Shot Glass (US), Verity La, Wonderbook of Poetry and a number of print anthologies. She is widely published in Australia and overseas. Born in Belfast she moves between Binalong in rural NSW and nearby Canberra ACT. Lizz’ awards include: 2011 Rosemary Dobson Poetry Prize (co-winner), 2006 CAPO Singapore Airlines Travel Award, 1998 ACT Creative Arts Fellowship for Literature, 1994 Anutech Poetry Prize. Special mentions include: Highly Commended – 2013 Blake Poetry Prize; finalist – UK’s 2013 & 2014 Aesthetica Poetry Competitions. She sometimes blogs at A Poet’s Slant