Crime scene investigation

From Griffith REVIEW Edition 35: Surviving
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.

Written by Maria Takolander

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Maria Takolander’s biography and other articles by this writer

The car deaf as a hearse

from the screaming weight

of all that came before,

we drive down a tarmac slashed

by white line, white line,

into the splintered light

of the woods waiting,

like eternity, just outside town.

We seek loam incestuous

with sodden bracken and leaf-rot,

homing to the earth that gruels

hair, skin, nails and flesh,

mulling bones for dogs.

There is no ground here

for the posthumous,

its ceremonies and detectives.

Psychology is impure as memory,

and anger a grubby friend,

the loner we embrace

when we masturbate.

Look: there is a birch leaf,

dazzling and uncertain,

yet to fall in this forest of late sun.