Insatiable

Penelope Layland

Insatiable

 
 
Phantom exits page right with horse and hound, leaving only this page of smudgy sells for sea monkeys, money boxes with combination locks, a promise of proficiency on the mouth organ in 30 minutes. Never did send for the x-ray spectacles, sachets of stamps from a guaranteed 20 nations. No habit of purchase,   but insatiable belief, even now and nevertheless, in the phantom potential of a tiny spy camera, its imagined spools of gossamer film, girl genius solves at last the baffling crime, the x-ray reveal  of a best friend’s parasitic twin notched shrivelled in her liver, the amazed face of my mother at this sudden musicality, insatiable even for the cellophane packs of small stamps, mainly maroon, bearing palm trees, public buildings with shaded colonnades, and king-like turbaned heads.
 
 
 
 

Penelope Layland’s latest book of poetry, Things I’ve thought  to tell you since I saw you last, was published in August 2018. Her book Suburban Anatomy was short-listed for the Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry and her book The Unlikely Orchard was commended in the ACT Book of the Year awards. Penelope has a PhD from the University of Canberra and has worked as a journalist, a speechwriter, a media and policy adviser and a communications director.