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  • Published 20230801
  • ISBN: 978-1-922212-86-3
  • Extent: 200pp
  • Paperback (234 x 153mm), eBook

On the bleached beach
of café seats, he’s drenched, hair
slicked, tarnished as tines
pulled up from a shipwreck, save
a naughty part:
silver forelock a hook
swaying as he sucks the wet
C that is oyster and draws
champagne from
a bucket, making naked
ice gasp. O Daddy
to beauties on Boulevard
Saint-Germain, smirking
or hurried, returning
on long legs, secretive
as mermaids. Could they all
be his daughters?
Washed up through green-
peopled traffic as he
sits spread, avid, the littlest
last clicking shut her clamshell
compact before a Fiat’s
beep beep, bending to kiss
a vessel-webbed cheek,
her sisters, off searching for
princes, perpetually undressed
by gaze and gaga heat.

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About the author

Paula Bohince

Paula Bohince is the author of three collections of poetry. Her work has been published in Australian Book Review, The Australian, The New Yorker...

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