Jill Martindale Farrar
To no schedule but her own mostly, maybe, after rain though sometimes drought decides She sits and bares her teeth surviving soil as poor as stone and crooked stares Medea in her battlements equipped with barbs impervious, immune to beauty’s rules And season’s rhyme till some whim or enduring rage weeps from her her defensive turrets crow Letting blood betray a need, first crimson leeching through her stately trademark thorns extends a paw ⸺ and all at once her angry shape shifts to something simpler, and still more complex: small bulbs burst Her expensive threat erupts and showers dainty motes, upon assailants, bright as sun.
Jill Martindale Farrar is a writer working from the NSW South Coast. Her PhD (UWS) The Glossary, looks at ‘the text in the margins’. Her work has appeared in Meanjin, Aspect, Overland and TEXT, her journalism in Sydney Morning Herald, Vogue, HQ, Australian Financial Review.
Old Water Rat Publishing 