from Issue #8: Poetry by Lyn Vellins

Photo (CC) Selena N. B. H. @ Flickr

Photo (CC) Selena N. B. H. @ Flickr

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Dancing with echoes

Last night’s rain listens on the grass
…….it hears wings whisking upwards
………..the whips of cuckoos rising and falling,
hitches a ride on a train ticking in the distance.

This morning skulks beside stones lonely as a leash of foxes
…….it fails to warm even the brown lizards that perch alert
………..beside the fallen frangipani and the dew-sopped feather.

A Xerox copy of the screen door’s angles
…….lies sun-stamped onto the green street door
………..gracing true light silence and shade
echoes filter through splayed fingers.

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Sunday 3pm

i

In this solitude
……..ambient light presses
……………maquillaged diamonds
across the threshold.
The open door
………….lays columns of
…………luminous shade and light
on the linoleum floor,
………weightless bright notes
…………….waiting to be played.

.

ii

In front of me
……..the dog on the Persian carpet
……………has no need
of anything right now:
sunlight makes
……..her fur iridescent
……………she lifts
her face in wonder
……..as if she is
……………seeing me
for the first time
again &
……..again &
…………….again

.

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ABOUT THE POET

LYN VELLINS is a Sydney-based poet. She runs a monthly poetry reading group, ‘RhiZomic’, and was on the committee of many reputed publications and on several editorial committees whilst at Sydney University. Her first collection of poetry, A Fragile Transcendence, was published by Picaro Press in July, 2012.

New Double Issue launch on 10 April!

Contrappasso Double Issue, April 2015

Contrappasso Double Issue, April 2015

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Roll camera…

Contrappasso starts its 4th year with a DOUBLE ISSUE.

Writers at the Movies, edited by Matthew Asprey Gear and guest Noel King, brings together many kinds of artists who have been captivated by film: its imagery, history, personalities and political edge. Across essays, fiction, poetry, interviews and photography, the contributors are James Franco, Emmanuel Mouret, Sarah Berry, Barry Gifford, Michael Atkinson, Luc Sante, R. Zamora Linmark, Richard Lowenstein, Anthony May, Michael Eaton, Jon Lewis, Jonathan Rosenbaum, Scott Simmon, Clive Sinclair and the late, great Richard Hugo.

Companion issue Contrappasso #8 takes the journal’s adventures in international writing further and wider, with its biggest selection of new fiction and poetry, from nine countries.

There’s an interview with Filipino authors F. H. Batacan and Andrea Pasion-Flores, plus stories by Pasion-Flores, US authors Rick DeMarinis and Kent Harrington and, in a Contrappasso first, a long-overdue translation of Argentine modernist author Roberto Arlt (with translator Lucas Lyndes)…

…plus the most poetry in any Contrappasso issue, with work by Nicaragua’s Blanca Castellón (translated by New Zealand’s Roger Hickin), Spain’s Alicia Aza (translated by J. Kates), China’s Lu Ye and Geng Xiang (translated by Ouyang Yu), New Zealand’s Kerrin P. Sharpe and Mary Macpherson, the UK’s Bill Adams and Richard Berengarten, the USA’s Floyd Salas and J. Kates, and Australia’s Elias Greig, Philip Hammial, Travis McKenna, Sascha Morrell, Tony Page, Sarah Rice, Frank Russo, Page Sinclair, Alex Skovron, Paolo Totaro, Lyn Vellins, Luke Whitington – and one of the last poems by the late, much-missed Morris Lurie.

This Contrappasso DOUBLE ISSUE presents the most writers so far, across the widest range of fields.

And… cut.