Autumn Royal

Form, like body, should never be assumed –
in order to adapt to this genre one must
become perverse. Flattening arrangements
to fit through scripted doorways –
I’m synched with pre-existing material,
but I demand a prompt. I either read
from dripping pages or bathe the sheets
in a container of water, scalloped
for embellishment explicitly for this outflow.
I still can’t accept how the word lucidity
doesn’t refer to gushing liquids & after
this disclosure the helpline advises to clean
all spills before they become stains –
except I commit myself to motions
& press into the squelch. I hear soft
sucking sounds, a shallow pool is forming –

Autumn Royal is a poet, researcher, and teacher based in Narrm/Melbourne. Autumn’s current research examines elegiac expression in contemporary poetry. Autumn is the interviews editor for Cordite Poetry Review, and author of the poetry collections She Woke & Rose (Cordite Books, 2016) and Liquidation (Incendium Radical Library, 2019). Her third collection of poetry is forthcoming with Giramondo Publishing in 2021.

Documentation