The Tuesday Poem: Refeaturing Bernadette Hall and “Angelfish”

Angelfish

We’re flying over Australia.

Below us is the desert. In the desert

there’s a wound which is water

which is a tear with white salt round

the edges which is a little liquid gateway

as hard as marble should we hurtle

into it. There’s a road, a reddish snake-line

that crosses the continent that’s shaped

like an angelfish. The words are trying

to imitate the world as it imitates

itself, sand wrinkles like frozen sastrugi,

cloud shadows like black poppies

on the red ground. The brain according

to the N...