Gina: AROUND TOWN

I hesitate.

Stepping sideways through the unfamiliar door, I shuffle between sagging, purpose-built shelves, moving slowly to give my eyes time to adjust. A spill of cracked spines, piled one on top of the other bulging floor-to-ceiling marked by the occasional cock-eyed, hand-written sign, a promise of some kind of order.

shadows
curtain the alcove—
a beard coughs

Sections run into each other; Literature, Do-It-Yourself, History, Cooking is separated from Self Help turning a corner

You will find Tasmania along a wall down the hallway, past a sprawling jumble of random miscellany and comics. There is nothing here for me. I head for the street.

Fantasy
by the disappearing staircase
I hesitate.

by Gina
Launceton, Tasmania, Australia
first published in Moonset, May 2008

Gina: JUST THIS ONCE

stop talking at me—
understand the silence

I blow at it
as it runs across the keyboard
[a beautiful form] the size of a match
head with multiple legs and rounded back
translucent, bright

from the depths of its evolution
an involuntary reaction
pulling into itself

it folds up—
the tiny spider stays
very still as if under a rock
or a leaf, and I can't see it, shining red

on the letter D
.................... [for diversion]

you need not
shout—simply face me
when you speak

by Gina
Launceston, Tasmania, Australia