Melissa Coffey (they/their) is an Australian writer, editor and spoken word performer. A former theatre director, they’re fascinated by the wilds of nature and the human heart. Melissa’s poetry and fiction are published in Aurora Journal, Ekphrastic Review, Last Girls Club, Crow’s Quill Magazine, and Writing in a Woman’s Voice. An appreciator of surreal and avant-garde aesthetics, Melissa contributes regularly to Exist Otherwise. Forthcoming works include fiction in an anthology of feminist reimaginings (Improbable Press), prose poetry in Antithesis and The Ekphrastic Review’s 2024 print anthology. They’re working on several chapbooks and a novella.
Gliding through the half-dark, this preternatural humidity caresses my skin like an unseen lover. I am the moth’s muffled flight through twilight, borne by the hum and whir of bicycle wheels. I’m seeking the moon — or hoping it finds me. Jagged teeth of buildings gnash against the skyline. This city — lock-jawed in lockdown, holding me hostage for months, clamped tight on us all — finally
Go to Post >> This farce again. I’m city-bound. Watch the carnival of consumerism roll by my window, these come-hither neon seductions. I’m just here for socks and coat-hangers — we all know how that song goes. Extricate self from tram, self from the spill of humanity, the close proximity which cues anxiety. Extricate, land on pavement and — it’s all in my face.
Go to Post >> On certain days, I am disparate / fragments, washed up on the shores / of humanity; my limbs and torso, / unclassifiable as natural in origin, / my heart, hidden in sodden detritus, like a matchbox / thrown overboard, adrift and finally ejected…
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