Mogul

1 February 2012

How long since he’d sliced and salted a tomato?
There was almost nothing he touched:
silverware and bed covers, expensive notebooks
sometimes the floury crust of a gourmet burger
the younger skin of a grandchild or subordinate.

Somewhere, another old man walks through
an overgrown paddock on a morning
without frost. Waist-high in feed and weeds
the tips of his fingers touch grass and thistle
the destruction he has fostered all his life.

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Ali Jane Smith

About Ali Jane Smith


Ali Jane Smith's poetry and critical writing has appeared in Cordite, Overland, Southerly, and Sydney Review of Books. She is co-writer (with Aunty Barbara Nicholson and Anne-Louise Rentell) of the musical theatre work 'The Sirens Return', produced this year by Merrigong Theatre and The Society of Histrionic Happenings, and in 2018 she was commissioned to write a series of poems to accompany 'Chromophilia', one in a series of exhibitions celebrating the 40th Anniversary of Wollongong Art Gallery.

Website:
https://alijanesmith.wordpress.com/

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