Vivienne Glance
 

Vivienne Glance’s poetry and short stories have appeared in journals (incl. indigo, Blue Dog), anthologies (incl. The Weighing of the Heart, Open Boat Barbed Wire Sky, Friday’s Page) and online (Poems Against War 2003)  and other publications and she’s won prizes and a commendation in competitions (C J Dennis Literary Award, Split Ink, Southern Cross Literary Award). She is currently working on her first collection of poetry. She runs a performance workshop for writers and was a finalist in the 2007 National Poetry Slam. Her writing for theatre has been performed in Perth, Sydney, Seattle USA, London and Edinburgh UK, and she is a professional actor and theatre director.

Spectrum

There is no real difference between dark and light
though I measure memory and beauty by shades
and love by the umbra of what you said.

Your spectrum ranges far beyond my sight
and as the palette of this landscape fades
I am left with burning visions of infra red.

But still my breath stops suddenly when i see
a crow's laborious ebony above my head
or water sparkling under broadleaves shade
the gash of black dissecting sterile white –

you asleep upon my bed.

first appeared in Indigo, August 2007

Indian Tea 

On tea clinging mountains
my father lived with green 
waves filling his vision
monsoon washing his skin

He saw colour-draped women clip verdant tips – 
bitter scent seep into brown skin. He stood by  fresh 
green spread to ferment and succumb to slippery black

Furnace-breath-dried leaves stuffed
weighed, labeled  in coarse sacks –
a pungent harvest stacked 
awaiting English tables

My father inhabited this place between coast 
and plain - its contours bowed like the backs of women
and colonised by tea. Born into this place but 

serving another place – 
foreign stock grafted on 
native root belonging 

to neither