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No Straight Lines is a book of warm, but never soggy, poems. It is a book where empathy shines. Robyn Black cares about the outsiders of our society. She cares about the natural environment as well, but not in a gushy “isn’t it lovely” way. She appreciates the harshness, the brutality out there. The poems about her family, dealing with elderly mental deterioration, are especially impressive. Tightly written, with occasional surprising twists, the poems in No Straight Lines will fly arrow straight into the heart and mind of any reader with half a soul. – David Kelly
Boat Talk
strange syntax
hard to hold
in the mouth
rolls hesitant
over refuged tongue,
spills out into sanctuary of
the Goulburn river flats
languidly throwing
mirror-image of cicada’d gum
a heartbeat away
Christmas Island
holds court in
Flying Fish Cove
sweeps protest swiftly
under righteous surf -
stories stilled
one breath from asylum
and we pause in our day
to witness the truths so
carefully framed
in the 6 o’clock news
©Robyn Black
Longlisted in the inaugural Montreal International Poetry Competition 2011
Changeling
“…Parliament expresses our formal and sincere apology to the
mothers, fathers, sons and daughters who were profoundly harmed
by past adoption practices in Victoria.” – Parliamentary Apology
[by] Government of Victoria, Australia, 2012
My mother never knew my face
no touch of tiny fingers
counted toes or holding close
yet she felt me
insistently, I would have pushed
against soft membrane
fluttered, elbowed and booted
gently swelling against convention
maybe I announced myself with
hiccups and heartburn and a sadness
too empty to describe
if she had been allowed;
the succour of mouth and nipple
denied, how she must have cried
with only imagined imprint of
touch to scar empty palms
the years have now ticked
full lifetimes and yet
the mirror traps echoes,
each glance a question
A changeling, amorphous and unconnected
our shadows do not touch
I have no measure, nor memory
just these hands that I watch.
©Robyn Black
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