Wednesday, September 26, 2012




Harvest Festival Dress

A church table assigned to spring.
The greatest number of sunflowers, almonds,
beans, you’ve ever seen;
packed in sheaths of wheat, rice,
barley stalks, ascending the altar.
The display is larger this year,
a gathering of strawberries, peas, artichokes, 
a month's work of citrus sweetened in jars.
Impossible to align with comedians, but they are here;
three vases of pink gladioli, some in white
arranged in wisps of maidenhair.
Harvest festival is a day of memory, a choir of children
returning. One girl in apricot, delineated,
arches her heels in black-patent.
All eyes are on her.
She is a flower in a field, hand painted in
bellflower, pink sweet pea.
Her dress demands a signal, a swirl –
stimulating communion with her feet.
Rarely is she chased, except today, flushed
out of hiding from behind the church.
The adrenalin is high in her overreach for glass,
creaming soda dropped to her knees like prayer.
A ruby moonbeam staining her skirt.
Sunlight won't bring it out. 
Mother & Gran each having a turn.
Her eyes burning in their own private fire.
'There's only one way,' the women report,
'two pockets on each side of the skirt
sewn in bellflower, white sweet pea.’
Concealment or words to that effect
before a terrifying end
to a beautiful dress.

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Bounty

Bounty
Prose Poetry

The Five Lives of Ms Bennett

The Five Lives of Ms Bennett
A Family Saga

The Ozone Cafe

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White Collar Crime

The Last Asbestos Town

The Last Asbestos Town
Available from Amazon

Evangelyne

Evangelyne
Published by Australian Poetry Centre, Melbourne

of Arc & Shadow

of Arc & Shadow
Published by Sunline Press, WA

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Perth, Western Australia, Australia
Helen Hagemann holds an MA in Writing from Edith Cowan University, has three poetry books: Evangelyne & Other Poems published by Australian Poetry, Melbourne (2009) and of Arc & Shadow published by Sunline Press, Perth (2013). Bounty: prose poetry is published by Oz.one Publishing in 2024. She has three novels published The Last Asbestos Town (2020), The Ozone Café (2021) and The Five Lives of Ms Bennett a result of her Masters degree at ECU (2006), is published by Oz.one Publishing (2023).

Helen Hagemann MBA (Wrtg): ECowan

Helen Hagemann MBA (Wrtg): ECowan
Author & Poet

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