Content Warnings (click to reveal)
Death (discussed)
Camera Obscura
If dawn breaks, night remakes it.
A thrifty housewife, night recycles
reflected sunlight, presents the world –
inverted – across a tarpaulin sky.
The Sun is a fool, mistakes twitches
in dreams for cadavers’ death spasms,
wastes morning light warming
still-breathing bodies back to life.
Devotees of darkness know day
is a scheme; sweat-slick fever dream.
The simpleton Sun supposes Satan
speaks through your husband’s snores.
In their dark chamber, night creatures
condemn daytime claims of illumination.
It is light that blinds imagination,
destroys safe houses. False revelation.
Night does not lie. In the dark,
pupils are repurposed as portholes.
In a blink of pinprick stars, converging,
the universe can be reversed.
Made in Marble
Before lines drawn in Caucasian Chalk
I etched circles in the earth, carried
my inheritance slung over one shoulder;
blinded Cat’s Eyes in a drawstring sack.
I coveted agate oil slicks, named each
metallic inclusion, rolling the words
in my mouth like dislodged fillings.
I learned subterfuge; shot the Shooter.
I seized Lutz armies, grew scales
of fired copper, hoarding my victories.
I buried constellations, interred galaxies
in the grounds of a Catholic school –
the same place where tiny children sacrificed
the word “nice” to a gaping incinerator.
No metaphor. My birthright is entombed
with the ashes of an unacceptable adjective.
All's Well
‘All’s well that ends well.’ (Shakespeare, 4.4.34)
Well, all ends.
In the click of a respirator –
no one calling time of death.
All that is from the movies.
All that is past tense,
a tale told (by an idiot) once,
and upon, in time.
Like breath fetid with Cytarabine.
All ends, in time.
The means defend the crown
– the glory (and the power – amen).
We begin again – all’s well.
Well, that’s all, folks.
Megan Cartwright is an Australian poet and teacher. Her work has featured in Contemporary Verse 2, Cordite Poetry Review, and Island Magazine, among others. She was the 2025 winner of the Tina Kane Emergent Writer Award.
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