Runaway

Janis Joplin cries a smoky goodbye
and I turn towards South Head
a wannabe neo-feminist montage
with fast car and wild hair
the red-lit city and the ocean’s
deep maternal belly my new frontier.
I bought the necklace myself
a simulacrum for all girls who get out
before they lose their mind.
Years later I wear it and I’m back
on the road with nothing left to lose.

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This poem was awarded First Place (Teacher) for Poetry Object 2015

Judge's Notes:
"I love this short, fierce poem, which keeps all the energy of demotic speech with not a wasted or extraneous word. ‘A wannabe neo-feminist montage’: this is brilliant phrase-making. In little, it reflects the dramatic play of intimacy and detachment in this poem: the speaker’s way of seeing herself from outside even in the midst of the scene; the poem’s way of making an old necklace speak of the interplay between the past and the future. The metaphors, when they come, are at once strange and richly sensuous: ‘the ocean’s/ deep maternal belly my new frontier.’ This poem keeps all these elements in play and yet keeps racing along like a fast car, and is exhilarating."
~Lisa Gorton