Issue 18: Aidan Coleman
Sprints with Elizabethan Sighs
1.
The clearing weather and sweet
bounce of dial-up
(heard a decade later) have you chasing
a ball and its dog
through valleys you would build from Lego,
if only they made blocks green.
2.
I’d never rent in a David Lynch film
but others are stuck inside them
or endless meditation
classes in places less
than California.
3.
Every childhood has a dog
bite that grows as the pitches shrink,
like places you remember
from Monopoly
too vaguely to pass GO
with the date you talked into the Friday evening quiz.
4.
A cry for help is punctuated the way bestsellers
warn against,
so instead of crowd-funding
a heady rescue, we search for clues
in your parents’ wardrobe – find nothing
but functional coats.
5.
The greens and blues
of California Games were commensurate
with the lack of skill,
insisted the Professor of Surf Studies,
crying on so many levels.
6.
Before his conviction
for stealing a roof,
I remember him, whiter than lightning down the left,
gesticulating madly
on the playing fields of youth.
Aidan Coleman was born in Aberystwyth, Wales, in 1976 and moved to Australia when he was eight. He has two poetry collections, which were shortlisted for national book awards in Australia. His poems have appeared in The Australian, Australian Book Review, The Carolina Quarterly, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Poetry Ireland Review and The Warwick Review. Besides poetry, he writes speeches, book reviews and Shakespeare textbooks. He lives in Adelaide.
