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The Sunday Poem, by Philip Armstrong

Ink Blots Flowers, maybe orchids. That's a coral reef. Or someone's brain. A map of the back country. Dead trees, lungs, a lump of coal. A picture by Vesalius, a book broken along the spine. I'd rather not say. Patterns on my eyelids. How did you get those? A blackbird shot at night. Something in me more than me. A deed without a name. Spilt milk. Piss stains. What on earth is wrong with you? Two oil slicks meeting. Faces I don't know except from sleep. Shadows on an ultrasound. A worldwide cloud of mushroom spores, an ice-cream melting, forest fires. I guess our time is up. Taken with kind permission from one of the year's very best poetry collections, Touch Screen by Philip Armstrong (Otago University Press, $30), available in bookstores nationwide.