Davina Allison’s work has appeared in a range of literary journals, including the Australian Book Review, the London Magazine, Wild Court King’s College London, The Well Review, The Glasgow Review of Books, The Lampeter Review, The Galway Review, the Australian Poetry Journal, and Poetry Scotland. Her work has also been shortlisted for the Australian Catholic University Literature Prize and the Janet B. McCabe Poetry Prize. She has a Classics degree, two master’s degrees (one with Honours), and a DPhil in academic syntax.
Watering Place
Someone has left orange flowers all over the table.
Cloth woven through –
rose-beds
against
a backdrop of hills,
a garden that was
once a river
the stillness of water, the light in it.
Another of silk.
Bird Fragment, Lonergan SJ
He stood out on the sand flat, smoking.
“We need beauty,” he said.
I’ll paint
the heron
where you’ve planted orchards,
channelled water,
feel the fine brush in my hand.
He flicked ash into tide water.
Insight, Footnote
The rain was in his hair.
He wrote.
I wanted you
to have
oranges, irrigated by runoff
for your dish
where brushwork makes
a bird,
blue on the rim.
II
Late Quartets on the record player.
You lean forward
violets catch in your sleeve,
say “the river’s dry again”.
I keep water.
Night Moth in Amber
For my love who wore violets
so you might sit in the garden.
*
Your hair’s
all over the pillow
as though
it were a net made of silk
and thread.
Collecting rain for you
mother of pearl hooks for when you walk by rivers.
The moth catcher hangs his net among roses.
The Galway Review 