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Good again but this time mean it

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2023

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Fashionable Melbourne poetry

has this necessary stop block

in self-reflexivity where

                       

either the poem has come to the mic

to talk about what it’s like to be a poem

or to look the poet in the eyes

                       

down there in the narrow audience

and tell everybody about the time she

or she or and everyone knows this

 

one where she

as if the poem were the poet’s best man

at a wedding to maybe no one or maybe

                                   

            someone besides in that low crowd

who deserved better than to be dragged

here to this long instruction on virtue

 

so if at the end the poem hates the poet

so then the poem is unfinished and so

a confession remains to be extracted

 

so then the poem begs the poet

to be allowed to die from her lips

to tell what words she needs to hear

 

trying it’s sorry and didn’t mean it or

meant it but it’s sorry now or

this poem loves me and so should you