All our spilling comes from within

Natalie Bühler

Natalie Bühler is an emerging poet, editor and arts administrator living and working on Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung Country in Melbourne. Her native Swiss German, which does not have a standardised written form, frequently features in her poetry. She is the Program Administrator for Red Room Poetry, one of the founding editors of The Marrow poetry journal, and is currently studying a Master of Creative Writing, Editing and Publishing at the University of Melbourne. Her work has appeared in Cordite, Tint, Blue Bottle Journal, boats against the current, swim press and the Tinted Trails anthology.

After Louise Bourgeois’ ‘Arch of Hysteria’ and ‘The Good Mother’

I imagine myself hanging, delicate, a polished bronze recalling
volcanic satisfaction. My head shattered from the whiplash.

In the other room, motherhood spins milk-yarn into
worry. Foam rises through my transparence, my back arched—

she crashes into what could be my view: motherhood
kneeling like a warning in her glass case. Motherhood creates

machines, salvaged from emotional meanings. Mother-
hood lacks hands or feet, is marked by a wide gash across

her face. I knot my tongue and twirl the steel cord
suspending me. Motherhood unwinds herself neatly

into spools. I’m yet-to-be rib-stitched into a pink doll,
to become a plastic of self inside a soft, human bend.

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