his lover

Jemma Green

Content Warning: Domestic Violence, Sexual Assult

conjoined, skin tendered, hungrily affectionate

he keeps her abed in his fingertipped caress,

colours her collar lilac, the crests

of her cheek mute-pear, with knuckles cradling

crow-eyed sockets in a tuscan

yellow, like the collapsing sun’s bruise of dusk

 

he tells her, ‘it’s love’

 

she knows his passion, covers it with cream

ivory #1 from chemist warehouse

that she slips into the crevice of her purse

because he keeps their cash–she ‘can’t

handle complicated financial matters

or the carnal thoughts of ‘other men’

 

longer skirts, no whore-red ‘you fucking cunt’

he kisses the crescent-cuts along

her pulse, ‘you went out with your friends?!’

he cries over her welted wrists

‘my love, my love’–it’s cancerous–he couldn’t stop

 

they start again

 

he longs for her shadow stretched

long over the covers, naked, consummate,

desperate to have her defiant

she is desperate to deny, limb-crawling across

their bedroom carpet to an ensuite lock

she corners herself–she has a headache

‘just lie there then’

 

after it is done, he rubs her raw skin

they watch broadcasts in bed over rice

and canned tuna, her head on his shoulder, his heavy

arm around her–channel nine coverage

another woman killed

in australia by her partner, her man

‘dumb bitch should have left him…too bad’

 

she speaks:

‘should have left him dead’

Author: Jemma Green is an emerging writer and editor based in Meanjin/Brisbane who is currently in her final year of a BFA Creative Writing at QUT. With publications in Glass, Forget Me Not Press, FROCKET, and ScratchThat, she is the winner of a 2022 AWC writing contest and is a facilitator for a pop-up salon at the QWC’s 2024 QPoetry! event. Working fluidly between forms, she writes both prose and poetry, focusing on a combination of intimate emotion and a lush use of language.

Artist: Callum Ross-Rowland (he/him) is a Meanjin (Brisbane)-based creative writing student at QUT. He was the 2023 Literary Salon’s Photographer with his recent Diploma in Photo Imaging from Billy Blue (Torrens). He was recently shortlisted for Photographer of the Year in the Animal and Nature category and regularly photographs for Artful Heads magazine, where he captures portraits of artists from different mediums. Find him on Instagram @alrightatart. 

Edited by: Ashley Commens and E.L. Maloney