Three Poems on Daisy Noyes, by Emilie Collyer

Protection, by Daisy Noyes (Australia) 2020

Curve
 
curled into her curves
edge bed clinging
 
not much memory of his body
other side of her sleeping mountain
 
but a feeling, faint,
that he somehow disapproved,
 
and the one time I marched in
from a nightmare and he
 
was angled above, was she in danger,
her eyes turned gentle and patient
 
to my alarm, a reassurance,
strange as it looked
 
there was a logic to the
shape they made,
 
triangle was the word that
stuck with me, 
 
she and the bedhead the right angle,
he the hypotenuse 
 
and no place
for this small body to fit
 

Self Portrait in Isolation #10, by Daisy Noyes (Australia) 2020

Flame
  
morning light peeled brutal
an anger in me I didn’t know
 
existed, her sun wide smile
always cheerful in the way
 
a child of divorce learns to be,
and every day I had the choice
 
to eat my own face or
devour hers, I learned slow,
 
almost too late, which of those
was the right thing to do,
 
gradually lowered the burning
rod and stood still, 
 
flames licking,
so she could show me
 
how to step with care
into a new mouth
 

Mars Hiding, by Daisy Noyes (Australia) 2020

Skin
  
my sister always knew 
she wanted to be a mother
 
while I prevaricated past
the bearing point,
 
morning of her daughter’s
birth I got the still dark
 
phone call to go and be 
aunty for my 18 month old nephew, 
 
there she was, bare-legged,
gathering items into a bag,
 
it had all come on much
quicker, maternity leave just begun,
 
was meant to be three weeks away,
the calmness of her urgency,
 
slow moving, deep breath
all that her body was holding,
 
I slept restless and woke
to a startled boy who blinked slow
 
at this strangeness, arms up, I was okay
to lift him into the day
 
your life is about to change
I informed him over Weet-Bix,
 
those few hours he will
never remember, where I held
 
an ending and a beginning
for this alien familiar
 
who maybe smelled something
of his mother in my skin

Emilie Collyer
​
Emilie Collyer lives in Australia on Wurundjeri country, where she writes poetry, plays and prose. Her writing has appeared most recently in Rabbit, Australian Poetry Journal, Witness Performance and Cordite. Award-winning plays include Contest, Dream Home and The Good Girl which was produced in New York, Hollywood and Florida. Emilie is currently undertaking a PhD in creative writing at RMIT.