SurVision Magazine
An international online magazine
that publishes Surrealist poetry in English.
Issue Eleven
J. V. BIRCH
Daddy's Girl
The man in the moon jumps out, swings off a star,
slides down the night and lands under a lamppost.
He tells me he's leaving, which is more than my dad
did when he found another woman. I ask him why,
taking in his round face, dark eyes and wide mouth.
He says it's not his choice, his home's moving
a little further away each year. My home was filled
with eggshells when our new family moved in.
I ask him who'll look after the tides when he's gone.
He looks thoughtful then replies, to be honest,
he doesn't know. I sigh and see trouble ahead,
gaze at the moon and think how it looks like
the cancer they found in my breast so maybe
it's not a bad thing it's going. My dad had cancer
when he left the second time and never came back.
Well, says the man in the moon, see you around,
grinning at the joke he makes. His teeth catch the light
and gleam. Dad had a baby tooth with nothing
underneath it and so do I, but mine's stuck fast,
in for the long haul I hope.
J. V. Birch is a British-born Australian poet living and working on Kaurna land in Adelaide. Her poems appear in Australian Poetry Journal, Cordite, Ink, Sweat and Tears, StylusLit, Magma, Mslexia, etc. She has published a full-length collection, more than here, as well as four chapbooks: Smashed glass at midnight, What the water & moon gave me, A bellyful of roses and Venus; all with with Ginninderra Press.
