DOROTHY LUNE
OCTOBER 25, 2022
Orphan
i.
My eyes are as wide as an electrical socket: precise soul & delicate brink. I walk around town in a pink bowler hat and a burnt nose, I feel as if I'm at a pane: victim, not a warrior— but someone. I watched Dora, I imagined having her mother. Fathoms à la maison & fathoms à la tête; anchors that whistle lullabies.
ii.
Strangers squeak at a worker in the milk bar, adult children grunt in its janitor's closet. I have a cup on the door / to hear these winds / these foreign regions / one has a dying mother, another has a criminal mother, the last has a quiet one— I often wonder / if she had not fled / which type she would've grown into. Like salmon in a river next to a nuclear plant, what eyes she'd have / what eyes she'd have—
Dorothy Lune is a Yorta Yorta poet, born in Australia. Her work has appeared in Pinhole Poetry, Pink plastic house, Olit, Ice lolly Review, & more. She is compiling a manuscript entitled Lady Bug & can be found online @dorothylune.