Claire Potter

Two poems

Misreading / Minnie & Tom

Misreading

I’ll say how it’s done so the difficult questions can be leavened into small loaves of bread given in praise of crows

Let’s start at the beginning: under a perilous sun she wore medallions of clear plastic, pom-poms of summer grass; I wore fretted blues and feathered kneepads so our scuffle precluded my bruised knees

It is true I ripped her earring out which looked more dramatic than it was

She did hit me first, by the creek and the single willow, and after that, to my mind, she no longer resembled an orchid

So yes I pushed her flat into the dirt of this difficult country; and it is true that I write as I read — mistaking wreaths for wraiths, spires for spines, girls for orchids.


Minnie & Tom

In Subiaco Park
my sister and I

raced our sieves
through marbled water

scooping tad-poles
from the reedy, dark spots of three

intersecting ponds

we sealed our stolen tad-
poles in re-used plastic
lunch bags whose taut, sharp corners

nicked our calves pink
all the way back to the Valiant

where doors open in the sun, baking legs dangled out
grandma &grandpa chewed dried fruit

listening to the races.

Claire Potter was born in Perth and lives in London. She has two chapbooks of poetry, In Front of a Comma (Poet’s Union, Sydney, 2006) and N’ombre (Vagabond, Sydney, 2007). She was recipient of a 2006 Young Australian Poet’s Fellowship, and her first full-length collection, Swallow, will be published in October by Five Islands Press.