This week’s poem hinting at what lies beneath (or within) comes from Stacey Larner, a writer and mother of three who is membership officer for the Australian Horror Writers Association and author of a blog titled Forego Reality.
Fracture
She examines the plaster façade.
Runs her hand across the cool smoothness.
Her skin
snags
on an imperfection.
She presses her cheek to the wall.
Squints at the cream surface.
A tiny crack
spider-web filament
stretches from ceiling
to floor.
Casualty of shifting foundations.
The fracture appears superficial.
She imagines it running deep beneath the plaster,
a hair-thin rift splitting
East from West.
Life from death.
Creating binary oppositions
where before there had been
none.
A tear wells from the chink in her armour.
If the wall is breached
what horrors might find solace within?
Or,
worse.
What might be allowed to escape?
Stacey Larner has had work published in Aurealis, Vine Leaves Literary Journal and Luna Station Quarterly. She lives in semi-rural outer Brisbane and also runs a small school library.
Readers’ original and unpublished poems up to 30 lines can be emailed, with postal address, to [email protected]. A poetry book will be awarded to each contributor.
