Poems and Stories by Fiona Colligan-Yano

The Burial Mound

In my mind, the glowing hump
becomes illuminated by angry rays
striking off the stone grey sea.
And for a moment,
the discordant gulls
weave as one with the receding day.
Voices of the long dead
sweep upwards from the desecrated grave,
to keen with the flowing wind.
And, as eyelids flutter,
people gather in the gloom
and the gestalt sings awhile,
despite time's menstruum.
January, 1991.

THE VENUS OF WILLENDORF
"At University you were a goddess,"
the coffee drinker said to me.
I was slim,
I remember that.
But I only existed
in the convex
mirror of a man's eye.
And now my shape
echoes the curve
of that seeing eye,
and men's gazes
slip quickly off me.
There are no bones
of visual purchase,
no jutting hips,
or painful ribs -
no dramatic inclines
from waist to breast
to catch an eye's ascent.
And now that no-one looks at me,
at the sylph, the dryad,
(all those wispy, whiny things),
I have found
a terrible force
creating the world
inside of me.
It's a huge squat
woman thing
with mounds of breast
and clifflike haunches,
with rivers
and mountains
and air and lava,
all coursing in segments
through her turning
kaleidoscope eyes.
And I am free,
after twenty years
of insubstantiality,
to stomp heavily
through the prehistoric world
she has made
inside of me.
March, 1995.

THROW AWAY WOMEN
In the glacial night
he fed you to the geese.
They sniffed your pale brown form
but left you to the moon,
slowly slipping toward it
through the pores of your naked skin.
You, and the bottles
and his cowboy boots
he threw in the dark basement.
And after a while,
the mice crept out
and weaved through the silken strands
of your long black hair,
until the meter man found you -
rolled and creased like a tattered rug.
On the dark prairie
he planted three bulbs
in the moist sweet soil,
never to flower,
only to lie there
and feed the roots of others.
But in a dry year
we harvested bones
and pencil drawn faces.
You walked the streets
once or twice a month
and swallowed your shame
at the feet of strange men.
But the white boy was anger
who carried death in his trunk
and together they beat you,
and crushed you
and cracked you sweet skull
and left you as empty
by the side of the road.
After a burger
and a giggle with friends
she took a short walk -
home to her bed.
But under bright lights -
from a main avenue -
she was taken and chewed
as delicious fast food
and then stuffed in a drain
with wrappers and packets
until a small dog
smelt out her pain
and led his poor owners
to her crumpled remains.
And so every night
when we walk to the car window
or listen for a key
fumbling in the lock,
we all hope and pray for another sweet day
Before it's our turn
to be thrown so carelessly away.
Written in October, 1994 and regretfully revised in December, 1996.

Valentine's Day
Is this my bouquet
this Valentine's day?
I never wanted these flowers
that you give to me.
Here are black orchid
bruises beneath my eyes
with fuschias around my brows.
And when I smile
my lips become
crushed doublets
of rose and larkspur.
Then look among the bigger blooms see the shadows of ferns
that brush my cheeks and chin,
while buttercups and baby's breath
fill the spaces in.
And the rest of me
is the cut crystal vase -
brittle, slender
and delicate -
a pretty vessel
to put your love in.
February, 1994.

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