Jennifer Liston
I will not mourn you
when old man Siberian tiger no longer strolls through spruce forests;
when the song of the whistling thrush echoes only in legend;
when folklore whispers of the mythical bluefin tuna;
when you have scraped and filleted my mountainous flesh;
when you have sunk and hollowed brittle my bones;
when you have drunk me dry and
you who remain wage war
over my dusty clefts;
when birth is rare
and your future
funnels
towards
a
thin
possibility;
when I no longer
support your life
because I fight
for
mine.
Jennifer Liston is originally from Galway in Ireland and now lives in Adelaide, South Australia. She is an electronic engineer but has swapped numbers for letters. She has written three poetry collections, and her poems have been published in journals and anthologies, including The Found Poetry Review, Cordite Poetry Review, Transnational Literature, and Best Australian Poems. She has performed her poems at numerous Irish and Australian poetry events and on radio in Ireland and Australia. She holds an MA and a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Adelaide.
I will not mourn you
when old man Siberian tiger no longer strolls through spruce forests;
when the song of the whistling thrush echoes only in legend;
when folklore whispers of the mythical bluefin tuna;
when you have scraped and filleted my mountainous flesh;
when you have sunk and hollowed brittle my bones;
when you have drunk me dry and
you who remain wage war
over my dusty clefts;
when birth is rare
and your future
funnels
towards
a
thin
possibility;
when I no longer
support your life
because I fight
for
mine.
Jennifer Liston is originally from Galway in Ireland and now lives in Adelaide, South Australia. She is an electronic engineer but has swapped numbers for letters. She has written three poetry collections, and her poems have been published in journals and anthologies, including The Found Poetry Review, Cordite Poetry Review, Transnational Literature, and Best Australian Poems. She has performed her poems at numerous Irish and Australian poetry events and on radio in Ireland and Australia. She holds an MA and a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Adelaide.