Carlie Daley Nekrasov started with words and poetry at age 5. She lives with her family in the hills above Melbourne in Australia where she steals time to stitch together poems. She has had pieces published in The Long Paddock, Southerly, Gargouille, Capsule, Frostwriting and various Australian anthologies. Carlie's poetry explores the intersections between identity, religion, and rural dislocation.
Hope
Vices crush right through
acrylic bones, gasoline tongues, rib cages, dusty moth wings
stitched hope into sinew by golden thread
night is when we quietly count our abacus of private ruins
we rattle limbs stitched with hope along junkyard paths
headed nowhere, keep company with t/horny fools
cradled and cursed under starry canopies
blooming like vespertine flowers
when caressed in velvety darkness
weeping at dawn; a wilted, discarded root
followed the star of Bethlehem into the void
hid behind the heavy weave of stage curtains
to avoid center stage.
only when light creeps from horizons
can we move towards the light
like ink in water