Bio
Clare Roche lives in Inner West Sydney on Wangal and Gadigal land. Her poetry has been published in Dwell Time, Leopardskins and Lime, Uppagus, HOOTreview, The Minisons Project and Blue Bottle Journal. Her creative non-fiction was short-listed for the national Nillumbik Prize for Contemporary Writing (2020).
Clare Roche
Tiny kitchen curses
My kitchen is the perfect space for someone
who eats out six nights a week
The cupboard where the pots and pans
lie crammed has a door that swings to halfway open
and so I squat and peer
into dark corners to clutch at empty air
or collapse a careful pile
in a cacophony of stainless steel on tin.
I dream of deep drawers that close unbidden
gliding smooth on silent rollers whose
modern ease is echoed in the
bleached white expanse of an island bench
where bright fruits lie waiting for the picking
and flowers plucked from designer pages
gaze upward to the downlights.