Dominic Symes’ “Intimacy” was first published in the bi-annual journal Meniscus in 2021, an issue of the magazine in which the specter of Australia’s covid-lockdowns understandably hangs over many of the poems and short-stories included. It is difficult not to read Symes’ poem in this context: for many of us, the lockdowns transformed intimacy into a state of near claustrophobia. But Symes instantly turns this association on its head: the intimacy he is speaking of is gained in solitude, finding the quietude offered by reading and the small gestures of the natural world. The impersonal torpor of the lockdowns is brought back to us in the brilliantly depressing couplet “how we both sleep better after sex / but we’re both too tired to initiate”. The poem then shifts again to that liminal space we are taken to whilst reading, at once a lonely and intensely sociable act, in which we often can develop a deep intimacy with the writers we read, noticing the most subtle shifts in their style, like a borrowed reference, as clearly as “ the haircut changes the shape of your face”.
Dominic Symes’ first book, I Saw the Best Memes of My Generation, was published by Recent Works Press in 2022.
Intimacy
sometimes you get it reading Rilke
the small glimmer of sunlight
from the window
which rests
between your neck and the pillow
how our fault-ridden bodies
are supposed to shed, regrow and forget
how we both sleep better after sex
but we’re both too tired to initiate
you can tell when a reference is second hand
in a personal essay
I read it when I was reading such & such
like the haircut changes the shape of your face
the humidity the quality of your skin
now soft to touch
but strong, firm, young
some letters he wrote just to say
sorry for not writing sooner
there was this war I got held up in
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Author: Thomas Moody
