Judith Beveridge

<i>I have always loved the word guitar </i> - David St. John I have never been bumped in a saddle as a horse springs…

The sun stamps his shadow on the wall and he’s left one wheel of his bicycle spinning. It is dusk, there are a few minutes…

Through the end of an old Coke bottle he tracks the flight of a petrel, until it is tattered by sea-wind and another blurred mintage of the sun. Along the pier, he hears the men wi…

Begin in a cave. Listen to the floor boil with rodents, insects. Weep for the pups that have fallen. Later, you'll fly the narrow passages of those bones,…

I feel a sharpness under the surface like tin-tacks, having come down to their soft mud among smells where most would retch. They sift broken bits, tuck into their mud; the bay has…

Before the sea stops a long mile out I hear the blades of fishermen scotching the rocks and their reels beginning to grind like bicycle gears.…

I saw her, pegging out her web thin as a pressed flower in the bleaching light. From the bushes a few small insects clicked like opening seed-pods. I knew some…

I’ve had my nose in the ring since I was nine. I learned those cubes fast: how to play a blind bargain; how to empty a die from my palm and beguile by turns loaded with prayers –…

Perhaps it was when he first felt his shoulders roll an oar, or when he pulled the thick boots on. Perhaps it was when he saw the curved thin rod of the moon angle into his father’…

Today I watched a boy fly his kite. It didn't crackle in the wind - but gave out a barely perceptible hum.…

We heard the creaking clutch of the crank as they drew it up by cable and wheel and hung it sleek as a hull from the roof.…

I will use the sound of wind and the splash of the cormorant diving and the music any boatman will hear in the running threads as they sing about leaving for the Islands.…

They listen to the myna birds dicker in the grass. The child's blue shoes are caked with garden dirt. When he runs, she sees the antics of a pair of wrens. She works the garden,…