Published 23 May 20112 April 2012 · Writing / Main Posts The end of the affair Maxine Beneba Clarke poetry and i / we broke up last week we just kinda grew apart it wasn’t her / it wz me well / ok just quietly / between me and you it wz wild while it lasted bt poetry / she got all single white female for the last part there on me it’s true she wanted to be my everything i wasn’t sure i still loved her like that & needed some time to think bt poetry / she said i am not gonna buy that let’s have a break shit poetry knew i wanted out & started following me / everywhere i couldn’t work / or leak / or eat or sleep walk without her calling on me you know poetry at times / she can be so fucking needy after we split/ i’d be out somewhere & poetry wd just happen to turn up she’d pull that fancy meeting you here crap as if she hadn’t been hiding outside the house to see where i went / all that time i never thought it wd end like this / i cd see poetry and i / old in rocking chairs together hands wrapped around steaming mugs reminiscing about the good times when we first met i wz always thinking now poetry / she is beautiful you know what i mean i mean it wz like poetry cd have anyone she wanted & poetry chose me (not/you understand/ tht I have low self esteem) people were always saying man / you & poetry were just meant to be together you are so lucky to have found each other & poetry wd smile my way / as if to say i will never leave you / maxine we will be together always you & me & now i am starting to get just what that might mean First published at slam up. Maxine Beneba Clarke Maxine Beneba Clarke is an Australian author and slam poet of Afro- Caribbean descent. Her short fiction collection Foreign Soil won the 2015 ABIA Award for Best Literary Fiction and the 2015 Indie Award for Best Debut Fiction, and was shortlisted for the Stella Prize. Her memoir, The Hate Race, her poetry collection Carrying the World, and her first children’s book, The Patchwork Bike, will be published by Hachette in late 2016. More by Maxine Beneba Clarke › Overland is a not-for-profit magazine with a proud history of supporting writers, and publishing ideas and voices often excluded from other places. If you like this piece, or support Overland’s work in general, please subscribe or donate. Related articles & Essays 28 March 20249 April 2024 · Main Posts Why we should value not only lived experience, but also lived expertise Sukhmani Khorana In the wake of this year’s International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, I want to extend the central idea of El Gibbs’s 2022 essay on 'lived expertise' and argue that in media accounts of racism, analytical expertise and lived experience ought to be valued together and even in the same body. 5 March 2024 · Main Posts Andrew Charlton’s school assignment Alex McKinnon Australia's Pivot to India exists for three reasons: so that when Andrew Charlton is interviewed on the radio or introduced on Q+A, his bio includes the phrase "he has written a book about Indian-Australian relations"; to fend off accusations that he is another Kristina Keneally engaging in electoral colonialism in western Sydney; and to help the Albanese government strengthen economic and military ties with Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party.