Poetry
Prithvi Varatharajan
Lagoon
The lagoon is a lake by a shore, made for frolicking.
A lagoon is fleshy plants, blossoms flaming;
a sign that enacts motion
hours after it has passed. (Zip Merge.)
A lagoon is looking at a lagoon,
made or unmade, from a distance,
and thinking of being in it. Days
letting the sun and the wind
carry thoughts far, then further.
Against a glittering sea, shorebirds glide
and a Swallowtail
butterfly makes
a haphazard line
towards a beach.
A lagoon is the viscera of air-conditioning –
its quick smell of other tropics, a subcontinent;
six figures round a helipad,
watching close, as a copter
powers into flight. (A ‘goon?)
Black cockatoos, streaking in fours
and fives through the near, blue air.
Reading of them; wanting them. This too, a lagoon.
Prithvi Varatharajan is a poet, critic, and sometimes literary audio producer who lives in Melbourne. His début collection of poems and prose, Entries, was published in 2020 by Cordite Books. He has had poetry, criticism, and essays published in journals like the Sydney Review of Books, Australian Book Review, Cordite Poetry Review, Meanjin, Cultural Studies Review, Adaptation, Peril, and The Indian Quarterly. Prithvi holds an interdisciplinary PhD about ABC Radio National’s Poetica, and was a recipient of a 2020 Emerging Critics Fellowship at the Sydney Review of Books.