Julie Maclean has been shortlisted for The Crashaw Prize (Salt), Whitmore (2010 and 2013) and Press Press manuscript prizes, and was a joint winner of the  Geoff Stevens Poetry Prize (UK). When I saw Jimi, her debut collection, was published in 2013 by Indigo Dreams Publishing, UK.
*****

Babushka

So when we get there
her Christmas decorations
are still up
It’s April I say
What’s going on?
She says she loves them
Russian designs on gold
shot cloth
He’s sitting in front
of the screen
No move to make
small talk
She tells me she’s left him
seven times and tomorrow
she’s going
for real
Little girls
no bigger than your ring finger
lashed together by red ribbon
skipping all over the walls
Nailed on
***

G

I have started to dream of lost things:
a blue button from my coat, an aspirin tablet,
Siamese cat called Milly
Then you came, ready
for a party in a black cocktail dress
wreathed in red roses
which was fitting, since I’ve been dead to you
for some time now,
and of those lost things
I would like you, above all, back again
***

Snuff Copenhagen Style

On the boat we’re rows of well behaved
blue in a cloud of plastic poncho.
The Little Mermaid’s in the wrong place.
She’s too small and has her back to me.
I want to see the join where the samurai
beheading took place, the arm filleted.
Today she is ravaged from all angles,
wide and zoom
We take the train to Elsinore.
Ophelia outside the station is reunited
with her man in life-size interpretation.
She has the face of a blow-up doll.
A Manga moll. My lovely girl
on her barge of abandonment in
Pre Raphaelite Delight (name for an ice cream)
daisies in her hair in Midsumma Madness
(another one) reduced to a copper troll.
And it rained
 
Cultural Weekly is proud to premiere these poems by Julie Maclean.