Second Place - ZineWest 2008
MOURNING CONVERSATION
Kathleen Steele
Can you imagine how it was for Charlotte, losing Emily and Anne?
Death was all around her. Such a tragedy; such sorrow and pain.
His schoolboy rote tragedy, sorrow, pain
return the words to her, defeated.
She tracks his retreat.
Understands why the Goddesses determine fate.
A God would not cut the thread.
I feel so sorry for them.
Who?
The Bronte sisters.
He stirs indifference into coffee.
She swallows words
less sure of their meaning.
The newspaper cracks dismissal.
His face gone.
Sheltered behind orderly lines of black and white.
Lines that reduce death to a statistic.
Her sister's life.
Her husband's voice.
She feels cheated - beaten by silence.
Soldiering on with her chin up, chest out
and body seized by mute coughing
She has started to believe death really is a matter of degrees.
The Doctor prescribed Ventolin and she had
protested, But I'm not asthmatic.
All the same, the Doctor murmured with dead-end sympathy
All the same...
Now she sucks Ventolin with chin up and chest out.
Life goes on
in the pale silence of the house.
His hand curls deaf around the newspaper edge
She stares at her own dumb hands on the sink
Pushes them into the dishcloth
catches her nail on a thread
feels it stretch and let go with a snap.
She watches him read.
Index finger tracking
mouth testing vowels.
Her sister wrote messages on the back of photos.
She discovered too late they were meant for her.
She tries again without expecting,
shouts Charlotte lost a brother and two sisters in nine months.
Can you imagine?
His finger stops
Caught by the latest tragedy in Iraq.
Kathleen Steele is currently completing a Creative PhD at Macquarie University and is an editor for Grapeshot,
the Macquarie University student publication. Her short stories, poems and a memoir have been published in the
Kaleidoscope Anthology, online at Australian Reader and Southern Ocean Review, and in SAM, Living Now and Skive.
Her play 'Like a Tiger' was one of four productions chosen for the Macquarie University Drama Society's 2007
Godzilla Season.
The Writing and Society Research Group, in the College of Arts at the University of
Western Sydney co-sponsored the prizes in the ZineWest 08 competition. This group led by Ivor Indyk, brings together scholars in the humanities, writers,
and members of the publishing industry, who have a common interest in exploring the social power of writing. The group has doubled the first prize
of $200 to $400 and added a subscription of HEAT Magazine worth $60, to second prize.
