Fast Fact
Author: Ashley Capes
Genre: Poetry
Books: Old Stone Between Giants
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Bio
Ashley is a poet, novelist and teacher living in Australia.
He’s the author of six poetry collections and three novels and was poetry editor for Page Seventeen from issues 8-10. He also moderates online renku group Issa’s Snail.
He teaches English, Media Studies and Music Production, has played in a metal band, worked in an art gallery and slaved away at music retail. Aside from reading and writing, Ashley loves volleyball and Studio Ghibli – and Magnum PI, easily one of the greatest television shows ever made.
Poem
archaeological moment
a penny has come thousands of miles
to hibernate in the dirt
it’s not worth much
but neither is it worth nothing
once we clean it in a glass of coke
and the royal head has a nose again
we take it inside, though the first one
to tire of it reaches for the Sega
later on I don’t know which one of us
will take it to the front shed
where the Nissan lords it over dead flies
that gather in the window sill,
and hide the penny behind a landscape
mum and dad haven’t unpacked
years later when moving house
and neither one goes back for it
the penny can close its tiny eyes
to wait for a more archaeological moment.