after The Unthanks interpretation of ‘Shipbuilding’ by Costello and Langer
I want to thank them for tumbler pigeons
nesting in the ribs of my history
for drumming melancholy Sundays
into my heart before I had a heart
and knew what a heart was for
I want to thank them for whispering
through vintage lips—
the promise of a mother for an orphaned selkie
the humble jazz of a shipwrecked father
for shivering loose the hunger then the floods
for peeling back the skin
of an Elvis song to its heartbreak core
for the first mackerel I ever hooked
from a timber skiff in an oily drift—
the keen-eyed sheen, the reek of it, the blood
for a lungful of shanties, a swallow of cider
a blackened room with nothing but ears
for minor chords and elegies
for sound waves lapping in simple time
these raw, broken shores
Julie Maclean’s poetry, fiction and reviews have appeared in The Griffith Review, Kill Your Darlings, The Best Australian Poetry, Cordite Review, Island, Overland, Poetry (Chicago), Rabbit and Southerly. She is the author of four pamphlets and one full collection, When I saw Jimi.