Jordie Albiston
Jordie Albiston’s latest titles are XIII Poems (Rabbit Poet Series, 2013) and The Weekly Poem: 52 exercises in closed & open forms (Puncher & Wattmann, 2014). She lives in Melbourne.
Rubidium
Rb– Woodward was obsessed with blue tie office ceiling parking space all painted blue perhaps he did not know love love is there in the flame emission spectrum a brightness of
rubidus love-ly dark red & tomorrow evening just before 9 she will wind her way up to
Paisley Park for the Lebanese fireworks & hold to her lover & enjoy the burst of atomic time
shower the end-of-year sky love is forever almost his half-life thrice the age of the universe
scientia vincere tenebras
the storm last night was large & morning’s sea is Shut like a jaw
it leaves not even the heel of a shoe of anyone gone “home” for
some while we walk chaotica strewn all over the shore & scores
& scores of miniscule beings bereft of kith & kin a shag protects
what is left of a jut a bit of rock thrown up like joy from the very
floor of the world you know my emotions before I feel them you
know my definitions & gulls fly sullenly through the sky mirror-
ed there in the continental drift of your vapoury silvery eyes if I
break you open you will catch fire if I say the wrong thing say
it wronger if I just say nought nought nought but I don’t pick up
I don’t know the signs & where was I when all this was taught we
turn ourselves toward the wetlands & for some while we walk I
keep half an eye for a Lewin’s Rail in the tangled lignum & sea club-
rush but nothing nothing nothing no Baillon’s Crake working the
reeds or glasswort sedge or grass the storm last night was large
o where do they go when the wind blows faster than time? the
word is — & I like how it sounds but I don’t know what it means
don’t know if I know if it matters this morning & this is no time
for being a poet the pieces are here but nowhere to put them the
word is here — the kisses are here — but no mouths