The Wardrobe's Best Dressed: The Light We Cannot See by Anne Casey

This selection, chosen by Guest Curator Kirsten Kowalewski, is from The Light We Cannot See by Anne Casey, released by Salmon Poetry in 2021.

Antipodean interlude

Thrilled shrieks
pierce still blue
afternoon—
		a party in the garden:
		saffron, crimson,
		emerald slivers

swirl from overhanging
branches as
lorikeets cluster
		to feast on
		teeming liquid
		-ambar seed pods and,

embracing these welcome
minutes’ distraction
from distancing measures,
		calls from ‘home’
		half a world away—
		a third family member

lost to this
silently creeping curse,
i spread wide my arms,
		stretch heart skyward,
		breathe deeply under
		overarching boughs

and open my eyes
to a small universe
of grey-brown spheres
		gently swaying
		midst the frenzied
		feeding,
	
each one so like
a tiny spiky
Death Star—
		a perfect
		wooden replica
		of a COVID-19 cell.

Originally from the west of Ireland and living in Sydney, Anne Casey is author of five poetry collections. A journalist and legal author for 30 years, her work is widely published internationally, ranking in The Irish Times‘ Most Read. Anne has won literary awards in Ireland, Australia, the UK, Canada, Hong Kong and the USA, most recently American Writers Review 2021 and the Henry Lawson Prize 2022. She is the recipient of an Australian Government scholarship and a bursary for her PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Technology Sydney where she researches and teaches.

Kirsten Kowalewski is the editor for online horror fiction review resource Monster Librarian. She has an MLS and a specialist certificate in school library media from Indiana University, has worked as a children’s librarian and elementary school media specialist, and is a lifelong reader.