T.A.R. Wallace

poetry

Photo by Filipe Almeida

Opening Up Space

So many thoughts: a world, me, appearances.
Every idea: a picture, a story, a reason.
And you: a reflection, a feeling, a voice.
Our bodies: wrapped around air.
Our hearts: reaching for cells.
My mind: tight, easing.
Your love: a delicate thread.
Somewhere, amidst all of this:
water, fear, possibility.
Beyond all of this: nothing, repeatedly.
Every chance, every hope, every loss:
an icon, a memory, a dream.
We are naked on the hill.
The sky rolls out unlimited.
Our eyes break under the weight.
Our mouths are wordless.
My skin: touches yours.
There are pauses here, for breathing;
hands for holding.
Together we can explode.

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I Should Be More Judicious

For a while. Stay close to locus,
cave up and linger, grant penance.
Turn theory at the corners,
stick to sugar.

You: Should be more alive
and cry less. Throw fish at me,
breathe thunder, dress regularly.
Then go to the near old town.

There - there will be luck.
Warm, in a container, parted
and placed for you, just
the way you like it.

I - I will hear about it.
The trains will tell me,
our daughter will tell us,
my father will drop in
hand me a note about it.

Then I will know:
That the suburb has fallen.
That the factories and cars
have stacked. And reconciled.

Slipped further and deeper,
bombed the skies and the beauty.
Returned to the desert
where I sit, with my doctor,
with everyone from my past.

Where you, in pajamas at last,
at the end of your bed,
turn the pages
of the rising, cascading of my head.

T.A.R. Wallace (he/his) is a yoga therapist and table tennis coach living on Dja Dja Wurrung country, Australia. His poems have been published in The Brussels Review, Prosetrics, Conduit, Big Score Lit, The Poetry Lighthouse, Meanjin, Heat, Australian Poetry Journal, and others. He won the Lane Cove Literary Awards Poetry Prize 2023.

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