The Other Side of the Moon - Lydia Trethewey

After Helen Frankenthaler

a moon is pale red in an areola of mauve light

green-body of the sky hung in web of membranes

diaphanous un-primed canvas holds the shape of a breast,

lines like trails of desire made by walking where one ought not to go.

I run a finger down the glossy page, lean close

late atmosphere daubed on with a wet sponge,

the afterthought of the nipple a tweak of the brush

yellow scar tissue stretch-marks purposeful, this flesh circumscribed

by the light of my bedroom lamp,

takes me to the other side

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Lydia Trethewey is a poet and artist based in Western Australia. She is currently undertaking a PhD in poetry at Curtin University (WA), developing an ekphrastic verse memoir as a way of storying queer experience. She is curious about the potential of object-oriented-ontology to inform an ekphrastic practice which is both ecological, and radically open. Her work has been published by Meniscus Journal, Beyond Queer Words, The Ekphrastic Review, and Spineless Wonders among others. She completed a PhD in fine art at Curtin in 2018, and works there as a sessional academic in the Department of Art. Her visual works have been exhibited in Australia, China, Spain, France and Poland, and can be found in major collections in WA.