Chittagong
A kennings poem for Bellevue Hill Public School
Rusted whales
beached in the Bay of Bengal.
Ribs dismantled, returned
to metalled mud.
Ships splinter,
brittle as bone.
No time to
carve tombstones
in sand.
Blueprints don’t detail
these distances or depths,
boys hide and seek
in hulls.
Debris blazes on
scrapyard shores. Fractured shifts
of salvaged sleep,
dreams set adrift with
tomorrow’s satellites.
Below, there is a broken city,
the ocean can’t recall
all it has kept.
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Tamryn Bennett is an Australian writer and visual artist currently living in Mexico. Since 2004 she has exhibited artists books (Showers and Clearing and Polaroids and Postcards) illustrations and comics in Sydney, Melbourne and Mexico. Her poetry, illustrations and articles have appeared in Five Bells, Nth Degree, Mascara Literary Review and various academic publications. She has a PhD in ‘Comics Poetry’ from The University of New South Wales and when in Sydney was Art & Publications Director for The Red Room Company.
