Highly Commended: Poetry, PS Cottier
PS Cottier has a PhD and a law degree, neither of which help with the writing of poetry. She co-edited The Stars Like Sand: Australian Speculative Poetry, described as ‘one of a kind’ in the Sydney Morning Herald, and has written three full length collections. Her chapbook Quick Bright Things: Poems of Fantasy and Myth was called 'an elegant carriage ride through a department store of social criticism’ and her poetry has been published in Canada, India, Japan, the UK and the USA, as well as in Australia. Her work appears in in Verity La, Plumwood Mountain, Cordite, Social Alternatives, Right Now, Australian Poetry, and in various anthologies, including The Best Australian Science Writing 2018, The Grieve Anthology 2018, Poetry Bridges Canberra/Nara Commemorative Anthology, and The Australian Catholic University Poetry Prize anthology 2018. She often posts original poems at pscottier.com.
Locus
This is the place where they meet,
to swing that one, fatal punch,
or to lose the distinction
between beer-mat
and face, the word ‘glass’
shattering into a jagged verb,
through a flapping cheek of pain.
A quick slurred surgery of rage,
and two lives disfigured.
Here is the place --
the green oval, and the young player
caught by a sudden blow,
the laws of the game (whichever)
rewritten in a quick, scarlet ink.
A silhouette traced outside a pub,
shows where a look could not be borne
without a blunt, irrevocable answer.
Or the ambulance guy, scraping up
human carpaccio, where a dare
to run into traffic did not go so well,
and a bridegroom married the road.
A few trenches short of a war,
a few left-rights outside of a ring,
and this suburb could be that place.
Such a tightrope between good bloke
and prisoner, such a snip of time.
Any street can be the place,
the place where death and the men will meet.
to swing that one, fatal punch,
or to lose the distinction
between beer-mat
and face, the word ‘glass’
shattering into a jagged verb,
through a flapping cheek of pain.
A quick slurred surgery of rage,
and two lives disfigured.
Here is the place --
the green oval, and the young player
caught by a sudden blow,
the laws of the game (whichever)
rewritten in a quick, scarlet ink.
A silhouette traced outside a pub,
shows where a look could not be borne
without a blunt, irrevocable answer.
Or the ambulance guy, scraping up
human carpaccio, where a dare
to run into traffic did not go so well,
and a bridegroom married the road.
A few trenches short of a war,
a few left-rights outside of a ring,
and this suburb could be that place.
Such a tightrope between good bloke
and prisoner, such a snip of time.
Any street can be the place,
the place where death and the men will meet.
