Poems: Ant Farm & Pot Plants are Political
This week’s Poet’s Corner contribution comes from Megan Cartwright.
Ant Farm
Cold pheromone trail, the party
severed. Barbed armies raise barricades
of planters, voracious vegetation
halting communications with the colony.
The workers, marching endlessly, go
one by one; their destiny a death spiral.
Pot Plants are Political
They move the plants in on the first day of the school year,
slender potted things: alert, verdant, to brighten
tight corners and secret nooks.
The dewy freshness fades, rapid as post-holiday goodwill.
The pot plants droop, pitifully impotent,
else crane like broken necks for sunlight.
Fallen flowers, severed / heads interrogating policy.
Roots and our own skeleton-fingers seeking
any drop of condensation we might photosynthesise.
We must concentrate our convex gaze to the ground.
No carbon-copy phoenix, or plastic plant life –
a fire-farmed forest, rendered emerald, bright as a bruise.
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Megan Cartwright lives in Canberra, where she teaches English literature and drama. She has been the recipient of a highly commended award from the Independent Writers Group of New South Wales, and her poems have appeared in various overseas and Australian online and print magazines and journals, including ‘Quadrant’.
Readers’ original and unpublished poems of up to 40 lines can be emailed, with postal address, to [email protected]. Submissions should be in the body of the email, not as attachments. A poetry book will be awarded to each accepted contributor.