In Fancy

(after Enfance)

why on earth would i blow open the safe
of childhood? as lord of metallic silence
sitting pretty & blue-balled in a stairwell
twiddling thumbs for the building to succumb
to its own foundations meanwhile comets
moon & sea generate a new mythology outside
think of the thickness of the globe red &
black monstro-cities clogging the way back
to the Gulf the long distance my life takes
root here in tongue-tied smoke a phone in
my wrist gleams there will be no headlines
tomorrow what a relief! but i will have to pay
some serious rent to re-carpet this womb

Toby Fitch is the author of various chapbooks and the full-length collection of poems Rawshock, which won the Grace Leven Prize for Poetry 2012. His latest collection is Jerilderies and he has a book of inversions forthcoming with Vagabond Press called Bloomin’ Notions.

Born in London, Fitch grew up in Sydney, Australia, attending the University of Technology as an undergraduate, and the University of Sydney for his Doctor of Arts for which he wrote his thesis on the concepts of play, rebellion, and ghosts in contemporary Australian poetry.

He is an editor for Southerly, a secondhand bookseller at Gleebooks, and he runs a monthly poetry reading series at Sappho Cafe.