Benjamin Dodds

Benjamin DoddsBenjamin Dodds is a Sydney-based poet whose work appears in a variety of journals and magazines. Two fun factoids: (1) Benjamin collects Mickey Mouse watches, and (2) his first collection, Regulator, will be published by Puncher & Wattmann in early 2014.

 

 

 

 

 

Unsheathed  
 
Split up the back like dirty
slips, the ghostly cases
stand unmoving in the heat.
They mark the places from which
these prawn-eyed death-rattlers
have lifted themselves
on broad leadlight blades into
summer’s ripening dryness.  
 
A far-off version of
me holds one up close,
Yorick-style.
The alien skin balances on
up-turned palm, primed
to catch even the slightest breath of breeze.
It’s hard not to wonder
just how it might feel to peel oneself
from within a congealing shroud,
to leave a pair of crystal domes
where obsidian eyes
once nested
                        unblinking.