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Mama Mada
Survivors
by Charlo tte Eichler
Our aunts drink tea for hours – they have no mirrors or clocks
but each other’s faces tell the time. We wonder
why their hands shake and rattle the cups in their saucers.
We prowl the flat – the hallway dark with years of coats,
the dining room with carpets on the walls.
Each visit we think something will be different
but there’s always the same red View-Master
with unchanging views of Prague, and no TV.
We draw elaborate tunnels and hold funerals for bees;
the cheese plant grows towards the window as if trying to escape.
Our aunts show us a glass case of curled-up figures
but all we want is the china cockatoo and toy koalas.
Their arms come towards us lined with numbers
and we wriggle away from their touch.
I Started
by Niall Cam p bell
I started at the furthest point
telling the road it was a lie,
and on I went. I told the wall,
the kissing gate, the swinging sign,
then told the school it was a lie;
the woman and the men that passed
I told; each rock, and word, and door.
And I did not spare my own house.
And then it rained – and I told the rain,
and told the rain that I was cold.
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