Carmel Collins | Writer
Carmel Collins
Phone: +61 426 733 358
Reviews
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23.01.2022 Normal Miracles Papier-mâché hot air balloon. Model head full of helium. No way to steer beyond open fields.... Believe in fireworks on an ordinary night, as sparklers paint invisible lines inside my eyelids. Within the fog a ghost. You leave, and I can breathe again.
22.01.2022 Flights of Imagination Poster shows missing U.F.O. Please return to mothership if found.
21.01.2022 Competition Everyone would float without the world’s opposing gravitational force. Fight to free-fall, breathing in atmosphere. High pressure lungs, no need for extra elevation, a coming revelation.... He finds oxygen in living for the last infinite moment before four wheels hit concrete. Three points of contact as he climbs up the sky, toes on the deck, one calloused hand on the grip tape. A human blade on the half pipe with a helmet and pads, whose record slicing is synchronous with a soft crack. He raises up a dislocated middle finger to fate and smeared red, returns to the u-shaped ramp rim, building up speed on the slopes to take-off. Resting feet on an upside-down skateboard because otherwise it might roll away. Leaving like competition hopes burnt out by cold results. A pass/fail binary betrayed by score cards and tight faces.
20.01.2022 Chase A citronella candle kisses twilight goodbye, lets out a last coloured breath and cools, bare wick blackened. Its scent spirals past the roof where a moth is marching through a patch of moss. He pauses at the edge, antennae turning, then races into the sky, ... path pressing against the crescent moon. His spotted wings push forward and pinch the air apart as the miles below compress. Destination and direction decided, the moth dances through the dark. Solitude crumbles as three chirps cut through the chilly air: a bat approaches. Skeletal arms cup the night as tiny eyes connect with her core prey. Wing membrane strained, she clicks, glides closer and catches a mosquito in her tail. The moth flees as she snacks, searching for the buried sun as the clouds hold unborn tears. See more
09.01.2022 Clouds above Gwydir Castle Raindrops slip on a lichen covered chimney, caught in the gutter slate, they crash into garden beds and bury the turned earth anew. Stone walls stand in parallel with freshly... pruned hedges, separated by a pebble walkway where a weed sprouts. A curved grey feather rests near the knurled roots of a grandfather Yew. He watches the estate yearly, first of the cedar tree grove circling the grass. A peacock is perched on his lowest branch, bright train hanging almost to the ground, claws clenched for balance. Head tilted, he views the visitors. Their camera snaps his slender neck covered in blue the sky could never mirror, a body built for show with enough hidden eyes to know all the world. But he refused to spread his tail to impress a drab put up umbrella. He drifts to the ground, display over, and shakes the wet out of his speckled wingtips. For his last performance, he proves how fast peafowl can run through the carved arch and past the fountain where he joins with his fellows waiting to be fed in the centuries old courtyard. The owner arrives tapping to draw the spotlight.
08.01.2022 Black Friday Guards patrol the parapet. The captain puts down his cards as dragons drop from the clouds. He counts two drakes by torchlight, takes cover, and commands the cannon fire. The balls smash the creature’s shadows on the ground. With every miss their mission... seems impossible. Following from the furthest spot of sky, a wyvern making minimum wage warms her throat with fire for the fortress. Wishing he’d swapped shifts, a guard swears at the flying snakes, whose namesakes spin like frisbees in old-growth forests. With flat bellies, s-shaped spines scaled down, they search for food in a self-made paradise. Passing between distant tree branches, the high-speed serpents save their venom for the deserving. Lair in ruins, a corpse rests on a pile of coins.
08.01.2022 Heart animation!
05.01.2022 Vexing Vexillology The meaning of rectangle flag stars, famous striped fabric on a white pole, right-angle,... or hanging flat, creased habit. Hoist a flag for homesickness accumulate new crosses as the colours coalesce try to count all our losses. Toothpick flags in finger-food. Conqueror’s crossbones stealing. Bleached moon flags in solitude. Our culture could use cleaning.
04.01.2022 Sphinx Her retractable claws catch. I detach my dress and pet her back. Purrs as she licks skin, tears ancestor’s sin, a debt... bought out in bites. Smoothing out my self-doubt. Another life my elastic mistress stole, but I will control the knife in my back. Riddle revealed I am healed. Her ruffled wings unfurl as we roar away, paws chasing our prey, past springs full of chimeric power. Freckled fur, stomachs full up we rise on thermal currents’ lift, new events covered-up.
