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The Gardens of Adonis

If Venus, laying the body of her lover
on a bed of lettuce (in the arbour, yes, Cupid
there too), had any idea of the import of the thing –
that later, in the sultry Dogdays,
in order to honour the adolescent god,
women of Phoenicia would sow seeds of lettuce
into sherds, baskets, little cups,
the bottoms of earthenware pots
that with their false flourish in June sun,
their quick withering (them having no roots)
and being thrown into seas, into fountains,
she was forever robbing Love of its consort
Lasting – then maybe she’d have lain him on
laurel instead, making of myth a different thing.
But both were always up against Death, remember,
from the very start – his boar, her rival in the nether
grove, by the river, the way it held him down
the length of its nine cool loops.
 
Poetry
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Michele Amas
Angela Andrews
Sarah Barnett
David Beach
Ken Bolton
Jenny Bornholdt
Rachel Bush
Mary Cresswell
Stephanie De Montalk
Cliff Fell
Tom Fitzsimons
Brian Flaherty
David Geary
Bernadette Hall
Kerry Hines
Andrew Johnston
Therese Lloyd
Iggy McGovern
Mary Macpherson
Dora Malech
Vana Manasiadis
Emma Neale
Gregory O'Brien
Lucy Orbell
Zach Savich
Charlotte Simmonds
Marty Smith
Elizabeth Smither
Abby Stewart
Robert Sullivan
Jo Thorpe  
Cath Vidler
Louise Wallace
Ashleigh Young

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