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Eight packets
of two-minute noodles
on a shelf above the sink.

Yellow for chicken.
Brown for beef.

The packets are oysters to open.
The plastic will learn to swim.

Silver sachets
included like batteries;

a mother once urged me –
Save those flavours up.

Pickled tips,
powdered milk could wash ashore.
I could learn to cook.

Stray ideas

Long arm of the streetlamp’s law.
Just beyond its reach, I’m leaning out
the open door for a breath of dark fresh.

I see the cat before the cat sees me.
White with black splotches, a longhair.

Leaving the law behind it,
stealing easily as light fails
towards the yard, the hunt,

up the drive and up the drive,
almost to the door before it makes me,
meets my eyes, turns to stone.

I don’t want to be the size of I.
I don’t want to be the sort of I
that stops a yearn dead in its tracks.
I want to step down, press play.
I want to refresh the dark.

Stray ideas, hints,
from the unmown yards in my head:
throw a rug over the razor wire
your capitals mean for the cat,

lean between your uprights,
learn grey, turn
and look away for a longhaired time.

Adam Stokell’s poems have appeared in various journals, including Dust, Cordite, Meanjin, Plumwood Mountain, Communion Arts Journal and Meniscus. His first poetry collection, ‘Peopling The Dirt Patch’, formed part of The People’s Library exhibit at the Long Gallery, Salamanca. He lives in Gagebrook, Tasmania.