Misunderstood, you do not change to mirror
a background, more to match a mood, a moment.
Burdened—news of global war, social injustice,
your football team ousted—a pearly blue fade.
If I’m ashamed, your best run at red. When you
spy me yearning or longing, a shroud of lime,
an unleashed tongue. But if you roll each eye
to double the disapproval, a primal wound.
I pop a montage of Madagascar on the wall,
the lush leaves, the inviting sky. Should you purple,
I revisit our standing, your fused, oven mitt toes,
and with a sneer, drop you on a houndstooth hat.
You curl a prehensile tail until tension bites. I laugh
and you hiss in the squares of a tartan scarf.
Fiona Lynch is a Melbourne writer whose poetry has appeared in Australian Book Review, Cordite Poetry Review, Heroines, Aesthetica, Fish & other anthologies. Fiona was a prize winner in the NSW Poetry Prize, ACU Poetry Prize & Grieve Poetry Prize. She placed in the International Welsh Poetry Prize and shortlisted in the Bridport Prize. Fiona is working on her first hybrid collection. Her passions are Leonard Cohen, good tea, bad dancing and conjuring nonsense stories with co-conspirators - her grandchildren.
More work by Fiona Lynch
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