Magdalena Ball

Magdalena Ball's short stories, editorials, poetry, reviews and articles have appeared in a wide number of printed anthologies and journals, and have won local and international awards for poetry and fiction. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature from CCNY (New York), an MBA from CharlesSturtUniversity (Wagga), and has studied literature on a postgraduate level at Oxford University (UK). She also works as a manuscript assessor for Manuscripts Online, is a member of the BookConnector Advisory Board, an Evaluative Reader for Catchfire Press, and Information Manager for Orica. She is the author of a novel Sleep Before Evening, a non-fiction book, The Art of Assessment, and a poetry chapbook Quark Soup. Magdalena lives in on a rural property in New South Wales, Australia with her husband and three beautiful children. 

The following works are copyright © 2008. All rights reserved. No distribution or reprinting in any form whatsoever without written permission from the author.

  

Black Dog I

Waiting
under a dirty cloud
alone at the bus stop
black dog barking
under the bench.

Beneath breaking fingernails
the paint chips
but I can’t get through the film
can’t stop
the repeated ruff ruff
pulling all sound inward
insistence of its demands
look at me
howl like me
beneath the bars
endlessly waiting
while you skip happily past
a brief wave
a wink
you’re gone.

And there I was
thinking
the dog was you.

  

Black Dog II

Curled in a corner
through a peephole of fat eyes
I watch the crack in the mirror grow
a solitary line spiders the shiny surface
opening a wound long healed
turning old scars into new
breaking glass splintering your reflection
into a hundred shattered pieces
while the ball of my spine
tightens against the crack 
seven years bad luck
covering the bed
in raindrop sprays of red.

The variations of your disease move across your face
like clouds over Jupiter
swirling white, brown, and orange, eddy shapes, ovals and stripes
curtains of ammonia and sulfur, angry atmosphere
under which I imagine a calm surface.

The pain travels in electrical currents
shock treatment
from you to me
a stomach blow
your amnesia a fist
replacing memory with clean pain

shadow boxing
feinting, sparring, everyone else gone
you don’t notice my shadow
in the seat at the back
spectator or opponent?

One morning
a sharp shaft of sunlight cuts through your tears
refracting rainbows on the wall
a simple scientific phenomenon
light frequencies corresponding to broken salt water
dispersion
the heat of your fingers brush my hand
as you breath in.

  

Quantum Crucible
         with thanks to  Erwin Schrödinger

In the gallery of mirrors
you pissed on the laws of physics
fracturing the shell of skin
under my fluttering lashes.

the book of nature
flapped in your great room
you leaned towards my ear
“breed true”
your energy levels
a quantum jump
from fingertip
to lip
revealing a truth
too harsh
to speak.

Easier to say
molecule = solid = crystal
gas = liquid = amorphous
talking us round the critical point
until we were running in rings
biting our tails
between the desperation of love
and the pounding stick.

It didn’t change the conclusion
hand on hand
blowing smoke rings discontinuously
the past no more real than the present.
 
In the whisper of a quantum birth
in the heat of reproductive tension
you swore
there was no loss of personal existence to deplore
ever.

  

Ineluctable

Licking your lips
throwing chaos around
the room
in glittering handfuls
crazy love confetti
then leaving
the rest of us
rubbing our eyes.

The bitumen of longing
your ineluctable departure
squealing tyres
an unusual euphony
as your car moves
always forward
always away.

We wave
with all the energy we can muster
your mediocre children
hugging our thick waists tightly
nudging one another to get in front
another summer visit
gone
a few crumbs of sparkling sand
clinging to our mousy hair
as we shuffle alone
to our empty rooms
facing the long
winter ahead.