METALAND

Kate Lilley

Telephone, bottle, stair

before and after

not Paris

not Sydney either

the shallow secret surfaces

planes of red and green

blue and ochre

figure and ground in tandem

white smudges

returning in translation

the passage is what counts

the envelopes back and forth

parcelled necessaries

going here and there

Kate Lilley’s first book of poems, Versary (Salt Publishing, 2002), won the Grace Leven Prize and was shortlisted for the NSW Premier's Award. She teaches feminist literary history and theory at the University of Sydney.