Still Lives
By Lindsay Tuggle
Published 12 February 2021
It’s through a thin curtain
she doesn’t enter
the wonder rooms where
moderns have no myths.
Ornament is all but absent.
Animal brides arrive
on an ad hoc basis.
Still lives in technicolour
by contrast
certain corners of the house
stand out
boxes of light and shade.
Glass banishes the present
in favor of a past restored.
Strangers
only peripherally connected
by bloodline
a genealogy of blank pages.
The human all too human
every material an encounter clash
scars of our beloved selves.
Still we believe in
mass habits of language
diffusion riots
white like
radio waves
or
the notes of a diary
lacerations we live in
inchoate against the altars
an elegy with no end in sight.
Commissioned for Marrickville High School, Papercuts Program 2011