fuel oxygen ignition (Alice Allan)

you’ve mellowed quite a bit
your tinsel compliment

a night in the country
all grown up
standing under a floodlight

watching hundreds of winged hopefuls
fling themselves at the whitegold centre

you point to the real moon
heaving over the sill of the range
and I reply

that’s not the moon

it’s too bright
too fast
that’s a fire


Alice Allan’s poetry has appeared in Cordite, Rabbit, Plumwood Mountain and Australian Book Review. She also publishes the podcast Poetry Says.