Carole Nelson Phillips, New Zealand Bio: Carole has been writing for nearly a year, though , as Carole says, the words have been with her forever. For a poet who has been writing seriously for such a short while, her command of language, and poetic voice is very apparent.

untitled one of those weeks you know? and I'm seeing it like a black cake I'm icing it red cutting it each slice is a memory a child, the skin of tainted milk scraped up, packed in a suitcase, set in shame on the steps of her grandmother's house lena removes visible aspects of the child burns underwear, pink dresses bow waisted kitten bordered. cuts wool cloth green, black, sews it into straight shifts, one cat head pocket, no zips she cuts off the hair the child sits on & the shorn child is a refugee in her grandmother's house & stops speaking, runs thin fingers across delicate glass, watches with silent eyes as some things grow & other things die inside behind a chintz chair in lena's house, the child hides a book to be found, pencil drawings on lined paper, bodies, big on top of small & the silent child calls from the pages the book vanishes, and lena buy's a brown suitcase, packs up the tainted skin of the child, three wool dresses & leaves it on the grey steps of another house Hidden in a ritual of garlic just beyond back door steps: a round slat wood table, sun twisted, silvered near a wall half hidden cracking, beneath the weight of a hundred virgin buds of albertine. at the table a woman, dark hair coiled, bare skin to the sun oiled casually wrapped & tied in blue silk freshly pulled heads of garlic lie in rows, with sure fingers she weaves stems, cloved bulbs hang below one another. the ropes will hang from a rack in her kitchen continuing the ritual of gathering & weaving, thoughts of her grandmother in a white coffin the phone rings, she doesn't answer, runs hands over coiled hair, oiled flesh heats & darkens in sun garlic paper skins that fall she will lay in a pewter bowl with rosemary, let them rest then, take the bowl outside, squat near it and watch it burn garlic plaited ropes memories of her shorn hair A gardener has her rituals she has planted a border that curves slightly beneath a low stone wall, beside a fallen gate to a barren orchard in black soil 12 lilies grow rising singly through skirts of green, white flesh unfolding to reveal a hard yellow spike at each centre near the fallen gate a blue enamel bucket, chipped, sits rain filled amongst dandelions. she takes water from the bucket in a can, carries it to the border, does this 12 times for 12 days, till the lily's are at their peak on the thirteenth day, she takes a bone handled knife, cuts each yellow spike, lays one at the foot of each lily, leaving the white funnel cupped flesh of the flower exposed All works copyright Carole Nelson Phillips

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