January 1, 2011 / mascara / 0 Comments
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Brenda is a Sydney writer and artist, of Aboriginal and British descent. She has had work published in journals anthologies and on the web. Her poetry readings have been broadcast on ABC RN and 2MBS. In 2008 she won the NSW Society of Women Writers Poetry prize. Brenda plans to publish her first collection The Sound of Red in 2010
Under the net
He is a man without a shadow
living in the park. Humid nights hiding
behind the kiosk. Or in the undergrowth
his dark shape spread on ivy. He wakes
to the murmur of couples leaving
a well-lit path: footsteps on the grass.
Settles to the steady roll of traffic.
Christmas lights. Possums sparked
to an all-night frenzy in the giant trees.
The shaft drops him into old territory
an open vault. Stale air. He waits
as the cold closes in, counts his steps
along the rail, unsteady on flint.
Hands trace a line to a corner place
at the end of a walled-in tunnel.
He lies awake, listens to the sound
of his breathing against the whirr
of trains. Heading into blackness.
Blind Faith
He comes at me. Side on. The weight of metal
pressed at my side. A hand clamps my mouth.
He breathes one word, up close. Move…move
There are men on the ground, a gate swinging
I am deaf to any thought of protest as the bag
covers my head. It smells of fermenting hay
hot against the lids. I listen to the men shouting
in strange accents, count each turn out of town
senses on high alert. We drive for hours. Stop
when the air is cooler. Maybe it is already night.
Blind Man’s Bluff at a half-remembered party
Arms search empty spaces for familiar shapes
a friendly voice. Now I wait for some command
to shuffle forward: like an old woman shackled
by pain. A baby stepping onto new ground.
Sounds carry when you’re closed in, bare feet
on mud-brick. A square, three paces each way.
I have learnt to be attentive to every variation
strain to catch familiar phrases under the door.
When a guard raises his voice I hold my breath
tighten the little fears, mouth dry. A water bottle
anchors my hands, roped against risk of slippage.
Clothes cling heavy under waves of midday heat
its prickly light penetrates my roughcast prison.
Only night loosens the pressure under the mask.
Or the touch of water. One small escape allowed
for daily bathing, to absorb the playful splashes
on skin and hair: fill a chasm inside me. Waiting
for the barter, like prized sheep penned at night.
Back and forth a mobile’s ring tone sets the price
of freedom. A pause in the skirmish: long days
trading this body for comrades held like me in
some other place. Waiting for payment. Funds
exchanged for my ordinary life, already pledged
long ago to their distant cause. Sight unseen.
January 1, 2011 / mascara / 0 Comments
Rumjhum Biswas’s prose and poetry have been published in India and abroad, both in print and online. Notably in South, Words-Myth, Everyday Fiction, Muse India, Eclectica, Nth Position, The King’s English, Arabesques Review, A Little Poetry, Poems Niederngasse, The Little Magazine – India and Etchings – Australia. Her poem “Cleavage” was in the long list of the Bridport Poetry Competition 2006. She won third prize in a poetry contest run by Unisun Publishers India in February 2008. A flash fiction by her was shortlisted in the 2008 Kala Ghoda Arts Festival literature section Flash Fiction Contest managed by Caferati. Her poem “March” was commended in the Writelinks’ Spring Fever Competition, 2008. She won third prize in the Muse India Poetry Contest 2008. Her story “Ahalya’s Valhalla” is among the notable stories of 2007 in Story South’s Million Writers’ Award. She was a participating poet in the 2008 Prakriti Foundation Poetry Festival in Chennai. Links to her work at www.rumjhumbiswas.com. She blogs at http://rumjhumkbiswas.wordpress.com/
Pelicans On The Brisbane River
“They’ll be here soon,” said the man in the wide brimmed hat
lumbering on his way down
into the wide belly of the tourist launch.
So we stayed above, sipping iced lemon tea
picking at our lamingtons nonchalantly flicking
crumbs off our clothes. Honestly speaking
nobody cares except for mother. “Don’t be so
impatient,” she said, as she smoothened her hair
before it succumbed to the river breeze again.
“Didn’t the man say they’ll be here soon?” So we waited
above the snowy froth churned up in our wake.
The launch skimmed like a water skater on the river’s skin,
flying faster than the flock of birds that seemed
to be doing a marathon just for the heck of it.
Some people preferred Brisbane’s sun bitten breeze
so they went up. But some, like mother, wanted the soft river
spray. We however outnumbered them all
clambering all the way up and then
all the way down. The river crept smoothly along
humming a song. Until finally the stars of the show
arrived waggling like miniature paddle boats,
jelly- jawed and ready to receive
our excited offerings of fish and more fish peeled
from buckets of ice. The pelicans smiled.
They spread their wings out wide for us and our cameras. They knew
what to do and they knew what to eat. Unlike that other
family that day, so lost in contemplation at the lunch buffet,
holding up a softly murmuring meandering queue
as they pondered and weighed
the pros and cons of each and every dish.
The Other Side of the Sun
Dusk has hefted this bloodless day
upon grim shoulders
and is now striding towards a horizon
where the Borealis are waiting
to feed…
Night drops down on iron haunches
and scans the sky
for a Moon, any Moon. Even an Arabian Moon.
Instead this night is hit full in the face
with wind, sleet and hail
Snarling at this January day, winter’s dragon
teeth stand
row by row by row on power lines and telephone poles,
ready to champ down hard
on bird, beast and man…
Its power is elusive. Elusive like the mirages
in the burning fields
on the other side of the sun. Redemption is too far away
and winter’s flinty fingers are breaking now
over the dreams of the dead lying forgotten
in unimportant lands.
Anaesthetized
I am at this portal
where the corridor of infinite doors
opens up one after the other
multiply and recede further
and further away from me.
Light turns opaque. Light turns heavy.
In that deep and perhaps dark world
light turns. Time ceases its terrors.
Dreams release their hold over notions.
My mind becomes torpid like a tomb.
My thoughts are embalmed. Sound
becomes numb and sight is nullified. Touch moves
more than a thousand touches away
from skin catacombed by sutures.
In the darkest maws of my belly
another consciousness stirs.
I cede control. I cede myself.
There is no ‘I’. No ‘Me’ left to hold.
Afterwards the hours are counted and stored
in the bag of oblivion.
Time becomes wafer thin.
Afterwards my tongue begins to seek words.
My words desire utterance and a man who loves me
understands me. Translates my wishes to those
who wield syringes.
There is no ambiguity here.
Eventually I unhinge and flow back
through the canopy of infinite doors
from that long corridor.
I return as one who was
a special guest of death before the gap
between then and now was squeezed
into an infinitesimal thing. I return as the one
after whom the world spun
and fell back like rain.
But I do not care then. I do not care.
Like a new born baby, I do not care.
January 1, 2011 / mascara / 0 Comments
Libby Hart’s first collection of poetry, Fresh News from the Arctic (Interactive Press, 2006) received the Anne Elder Award and was shortlisted for the Mary Gilmore Prize. She received an Australia Council for the Arts international skills and arts development studio residency at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre at Annaghmakerrig in Ireland. During this residency (2008) she wrote the book-length poem ‘This Floating World,’ which will be performed by Teresa Bell and Gavin Blatchford (2010). Publication of ‘This Floating World’ is forthcoming.
The very thought of you
You’re the face I’m seeking
each time I think of love
and my yearning covers
all the miles I’ve travelled tonight.
I’m alone, but I’m cuddling up to the thought of you,
of your fingers that come to me as if ghosts
inside a memory so crystalline.
I’m rounding my passion,
curving it to your meaning,
as you leave a kiss against lip
as a hand strokes my hair
as a breath is tattoo-delivered against brow
with a sigh so full of thought.
That’s when you leave me again.
That’s when I remember
I’ve been meaning to tell you
that you hold my soul in your hands.
There is silence at the gate,
all my angels press against the fence.
River poem
To capture the moment just before it happened:
The river was epic,
everything coiled and flowed
inside a great restlessness.
Then came a ribbon of blood,
then came curlicues made by stone,
then came the water, inking.
Canoeists passed silently like ancient travellers.
A step-by-step approach
You walked a straight line.
He circled around you.
You stood and stared into the sun.
He handed you a blindfold.
You got used to the feel of it.
He then led you down the garden path.
You walked with the smallest of steps.
He talked along the way.
You listened to those whispers.
He smiled when he made you laugh.
You walked in bare feet.
He guided you with fingertips.
You stopped, hesitatingly at the edge of sand.
He said: Trust me.
You felt a soldier crab climb your toes.
He seemed too preoccupied to notice.
You listened to the sound of the sea.
He kept his eye on the horizon.
You felt the roaring wind.
He steered you closer to its strength.
You blinked when the fold finally left your face.
He blinked in sympathy.
You looked at his quiet eyes.
He turned and then looked away.
You said something about how his hair moved in the wind.
He couldn’t see the point of it.
You said that it left his eyes to linger, to search out the world.
He said the wind was by no means a friend.
You said: Trust what you know.
January 1, 2011 / mascara / 0 Comments
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Arthur Leung was born and raised in Hong Kong. He regularly presents reading of his poetry and has had his poems published in anthologies such as Hong Kong U Writing and Fifty-Fifty, as well as in numerous magazines and journals including Smartish Pace, Yale Anglers’ Journal, Loch Raven Review, Existere, Paper Wasp, Bravado, Taj Mahal Review, Poetry Kanto, QLRS, Crannog Literary Magazine, Pulsar Poetry Magazine, Words-Myth, Magma Poetry and elsewhere. Leung has served as external editor for Yuan Yang and as guest poetry editor for Cha. He was a finalist for the 2007 Erskine J. Poetry Prize and a winner of the 2008 Edwin Morgan International Poetry Competition.
Kiss of the Moon
Drunk in its mild yellow, that silence
explodes like the first thunder in June.
My breaths swallowed by the curve of a body,
no name is fuller than the cheeks of the moon.
I taste the peach in your tongue, only feel
the words from your lips but never your eyes.
Heartbeats like summer frogs, knowing a touch
would return you to the soil of paradise.
Angler Fish Sashimi
(reinterpretation of a Chinese poem by P.K. Leung)
I come from the border between sea
and river, stage my performance art
in every winter, cordially invite
the audience to take part. I put a pair
of scissors beside me, you may choose
to cut away anything from my body.
I look at you, solitary lad,
your reckless cut of my gill. You angry
young man, a sharp cut on my skin.
I gaze at you, crazy old fellow,
you cut my stomach, ovary, and liver
that survives the winter, plump and juicy.
I give everything to you as you swallow.
You chew everything, understand
the taste of blood and know more of me.
I’m your magnificent caprice,
not an artist high above, bring
myself to your hands to manipulate
your boundless imagination.
I trust you’ll treat me well, without trust
how can we communicate, my art
take shape in the society?
You touch me and feel a heap
of flimsiness, or you can grasp my profile,
tell my truths and lies, a biased
favour for big mouth, strange face?
I sacrifice my best portion
to my best audience. You carry a part
of me, I become a part of you
and dissolve in a deeper, wider ocean.
January 1, 2011 / mascara / 0 Comments
Simon West was born in Melbourne where he teaches Italian at Monash University. His first collection, First Names, was published by Puncher and Wattmann in 2006. It was shortlisted for the NSW Premiers’ Prize 2007 and joint winner of the William Baylebridge Memorial Prize. In 2004 he held an Australian Young Poets Fellowship. He is also the author of The Selected Poetry of Guido Cavalcanti published by Troubadour Press, 2009.
To Wake In Someone Else’s Dream
To wake in someone else’s dream –
weather that warmed bare
arms and the inner arch of feet.
In a capital of lost provinces
to keep crossing avenues of flowering tiglio –
unmarked doors were just ajar
all the birds were facing south.
Lime trees, we reminded ourselves.
Lime tea at all hours.
And a flock of pigeons rose – no, click
of slats as old women drew their blinds.
And a heckle of car horns was heard – no,
bells from a distant church
recalled. And listen,
a blackbird, now, at dawn not evening.
You said, happy as a blackbird, and talked
as if at home. Still
they sing alone. Branches
were dark under summer leaves.
Not a whit less solid. Coated in lime.
Blackwood
We leaf before daylight from blackwood or ironbark
leaf on a pulse pressing as breath:
green vowels from blackwood.
They falter by nightfall. Their colour bleeds away.
We hope at the end of stuttering twigs: hard
won foliage. Even the lightest notes fall to ground.
In the thick of things there was eavesdropping,
there was sunlight sunk on events. Where we trailed
the forest there were pathways
to hold as a sound, and wing
and voice of startled bird.
We clasp single words.
We feel the rough shell of what has fled. An age
may slip from our hands.
We leaf before daybreak.
Our foliage is sparse. We leaf on an impulse
from blackwood or ironbark.
The Mirror
Eventually
quickly
everything changes.
The mirror breaks and we find a way through.
Shards cling to our cheeks like cold water.
Blackbird song streams in a startled mind.
Courses rediscovered in spring.
A new vowel
fills our mouths.
*
Even the faintest ways lead.
In late spring
the grass grows fast in the mountains
a foot or two high and folds
to mark the passage of a child.
Followers even by night
by torchlight, somewhere
we have no word for
climbing slowly.
Silence keels, its slate roof sinks
on things.
Scattered voices ask of you.
All we have a certain liberty.
January 1, 2011 / mascara / 0 Comments
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Jennifer Wong was born in Hong Kong. She has participated in various poetry festivals and readings, including the Man International Literary Festival in Hong Kong. Her poems appeared in several poetry journals in Hong Kong and overseas, including Coffeehouse Poetry, Iota, Cha. Dim Sum, Aesthetica and Oxford Reader. Her debut poetry collection Summer Cicadas was published by Chameleon Press in 2006. She graduated in English from University College, Oxford University, and is currently doing a Master’s degree in creative writing at the University of East Anglia, UK.
Myth
Do not talk to trees.
They have deep squinting eyes.
Long stout necks sticking out.
Rough chafing leather.
In the warm house you feel them
Inhaling and exhaling, your old furniture
Or their harmless smiles
In your child’s picture books.
It’s hard to get lost in the woods
Without meaning to.
Do not talk to trees.
At night they dance in ballet shoes,
Tell secrets to one another,
Put on a ring,
Wisdom for every year.
I Remember
Remember
Your dreams spilling
From bright red velvet?
When time feels
Free and right as memory foam.
A child puts his best things
Into his delicious pockets.
Curious and curious-er,
We poke and shove our fingers
Into every small crack or hole.
We dare to tilt
Order of anything;
Pluck cotton balls from dolls,
Turning them into clouds.
Remember how to play?
Knack
On our special occasion nights out
I enjoy her wonderful knack
For exuding grace
Carrying a toy-like satin pouch
Designed to hold a lipstick.
Her zealousness over the years
To build and expand her troop
Of uniform stilettos and pumps,
Arranging and re-arranging
Her proud kingdom,
Commands my highest respect.
Every time she drove
I longed for a built-in
TV in our mini cooper.
In the wee hours
I spent more time than necessary
Unpeeling onion skin shaping her legs, amused
But unimpressed by sheer vanity.
Drunk but not losing her wit, she teased me,
Patterned boxer shorts,
For flavours I kept
In my top left drawer.
January 1, 2011 / mascara / 0 Comments
la, la, la
by Tatjana Lukic
ISBN 978-0-7340-4051-0
Order from: www.fiveislandspress.com
Reviewed by KERRY LEVES
Born in Ojisek, Croatia, in 1959, Tatjana Lukic studied philosophy and sociology at the University of Sarajevo, and published four poetry collections in Serbo-Croatian while she was still in her twenties. After long-brewing ethnic conflicts broke out into war in what was then Yugoslavia, Tatjana Lukic came to Australia, as a refugee with a young family, in 1992. Poignantly enough, two Serbo-Croatian-language poems of hers were translated into English for the Yale University Press publication, Cross Currents, a Yearbook of Central European Culture, in the same year.
In Cross Currents, Lukic’s poems were published with work by five other women poets from (then) Yugoslavia and the translator, Dasha Culic Nisula, identifed Lukic’s topic areas as “human relationships” and “the relationship of a poet to her craft”. Nisula did not comment on the technique of Lukic’s poems, that not only present an emotional situation, or broader life situation, through evocative details and/ or compressed but telling images, but also submit the subject matter to a detached, critical working-over. Comparison, Buddhism tells us, is always bitter; but the speaker of Lukic’s ‘Measured Units’ balances the inevitable gall (the poem closes on an image of time as “bitter honey”, dripping like water from a leaky tap) with an even-toned valuing of things-in-their-own-right, as she contrasts a poetic and a domestic vocation.
you were pregnant with a son
I was pondering comparisons
time is one
but the hours are different
your clock – a wall decorated
with a barometer, a spoon
a red box for pepper
cinnamon and salt
as a second hand
you tiptoe quickly after a man
while you quiet a child with a pacifier
I erase a title
before dawn I question: should I put a period?
you change diapers
you have your own room –
a line full of clothes
your own midnight next to your husband’s breath
from ‘Measured Units’, translated by Dasha Culic Nisula
Neither the speaker nor the object of her inquiry – sister, friend, neighbour, another self – is overtly a winner or loser; the poem leaves it to the reader to make such judgements, according to need and/or desire. One of the mysteries of the translation is whether the Serbo-Croatian for the English word “period” – denoting the punctuation device – also connotes menstruation. This ambiguity tends to leave ‘Measured Units’, good as it is, floating in a kind of bi-lingual limbo or fog. No such difficulties attend Tatjana Lukic’s new poems, all written in English.
After arriving in Australia, Lukic worked as a researcher and data analyst for various government departments, mostly in Canberra, according to some circumstantial evidence.
east row, mort st, canberra
it started just at the time of morning tea
‘no sugar for me’, one of the fleshy gods said
and emptied his spoon over concrete land
‘it’s snowing!’ at one dash
we all left our desks
and rushed to the windows
‘open, sesame, open!’
just to catch a flake
and we’ll behave well again
staring at the screens till dark
‘open now, it’s snowing!’
but there is no magic fit enough
to move the glass walls of our cell
one by one
we walked quietly back
to our chairs
and dialled
a dear one
‘it’s snowing, darling, open the window!’
recorded all answering machines
across the lake
la, la, la shows that Lukic’s technique, of which a reader gets tantalising glimpses in the Cross Currents selection, proved transferable into her new tongue. Lukic’s poems join an expressionist impulse – and a warm emotionality – to a disciplined consideration of the place, weight, value of emotion as it “looms” in the world’s “small things” (quotes here are from the book’s epigraph, taken from Euripides’ Ion). The result is surprisingly satisfying, as the “small things” that the poems attend to are actually made to connect with history. The poem ‘1959’ manages this with enviable simplicity and magnificent found surrealism. The poem launches, almost all-at-once-together, a new-born child; the Cuban Revolution; the first marketing of Barbie; a hit pop song (Rocco Granata’s Marina); the aftermath of the Soviet invasion of Hungary; and the great Australian post-war immigration boom, as if all the above were so many helium balloons with different faces.
war was freezing in the air, everywhere
lost in a purple patch of a magic land,
the grapes were ripening
when i slipped into the world
before i had time to cry
the red dust swept the olive green
off havana’s streets
the winds were playing over the seas
with a bunch of new flags of all colours
above freed lands
at the back of his new weatherboard cottage
down under, in yarralumla, where the world will end,
a young settler, an italian builder, was planting an olive tree
the earth was circling slowly
getting its strength
what for?
even a gipsy searching a baby’s palm
could not guess
from ‘1959’
Lukic goes in less for knock-out-one-liners, than for the whole poem as multi-dimensional construct. The critical distance that the poems practise towards even the most touching or tender life experience, nudges the reader into the sense that a poem, regardless of its tonal intimacies, is an artificial thing, a feat and also a fiction. The speaker of ‘to a reader’, from the final section of la, la, la, is upfront about this:
how simple it is to trick you, you dear sitting duck
a diddler master takes you for a ride just like that,
a snake in the grass, from time immemorial
grinning at your silly bookish trust
from ‘to a reader’
Perhaps this verbal flaunting and taunting merely shows that flamboyance does not begin or end with Kylie Minogue’s galactic hairdo and mirror-panel dress. Lukic’s subtler showiness makes room for wit aplenty.
fallacy
he eats roots and leaves
and that’s fine as he eats well
and then quietly walks away
this is not what i complain about
but why like a wombat?
his dull depart is saying
i would and i would not
leave you darling
or: yes i am leaving with no doubt
but see it’s not so easy for me to slide out of
this warm burrow onto loose tracks
or: i am leaving now my love
but you have a very good chance
to catch my leg and turn me back
and if you don’t
it’s not my fault
when our story comes to its tearful end
or: i am not leaving in fact
oh i never do that
i’m just sniffing out a rooty soil
while walking around
what is he trying to tell me
a chubby eater
sneaked into the myth
where i prefer to see the elegant
speedy wings
of a flying beast?
la, la, la is structured around the changes in Lukic’s life. The first section, ‘there’, is mainly a recollection of a Serbo-Croatian past, personal and historical; the second section, ‘here’, from which ‘east row’ and ‘fallacy’ come, offers broad-brush social description of Australian life; the third and final section, ‘anywhere’, contains the book’s most ambitious writing.
Lukic’s expressionism is not trapped in a box of style: it connects with others, remakes itself. ‘anywhere’ includes poems dedicated to Australian poets that Lukic encountered when she started writing again and was once more getting poems published, both here and overseas. Joanne Burns, Margie Cronin and Laurie Duggan are dedicatees of three of the book’s most unconventional offerings. Each is a prose poem: ‘crater’ (for Cronin) begins by associating the great, passionate Chilean Pablo Neruda with “turning fourteen, rosy and tender, each monday falling in love forever”. But Lukic’s speaker provocatively asks herself/ her reader: “how could i possibly love what everyone does”:
nobody ever borrowed this tome? i will, and i will fall in love with these oddballs and dudes, a moment i turned to my side of the bed, my russian lovers were shooting themselves in the head, quiet French men, holding me like a champagne glass and sucking my tongue, gazed at the time past behind my neck…
from ‘crater’
The speaker honours her sense that she is “turning fourteen for ever”; then turns the direction of the poem towards the internet, to a “petition for a crater on mercury to be named for neruda”, and to Margie Cronin, in a display of verbal fireworks that mingles postmodern playfulness and a fiercer, perhaps more durable modernist commitment to making it new. Managing a generous homage to Margie Cronin’s own complex and versatile poetics, ‘crater’ equally makes it new and plays. The prose works for Laurie Duggan and Joanne Burns likewise engage with the ways in which these writers actually write.
It may be hard for any reader to decide whether ‘there’ or ‘anywhere’ contains the most poignant writing. The first poem in the book presents the “la, la, la” title phrase as what a young mother, walking her baby in a stroller, sings to entertain/ reassure the child in a war, while bombs drop in backyards and an unknown man is seen for the first time “coming out of wires with a bullet in his chest”.
what did i sing?
about a cloud and a bird,
a wish and a star,
la la la,
yes, nothing else
from ‘nothing else’
The book’s final poem, ‘reverse’, takes up the “la la la” phrase in the context of a pleasant but coolly disengaged encounter, lunch in a peaceful land.
when the coffee arrives after the meal
we will sigh and talk about the weather
a lovely day, we need rain
la la la
i will nod and gaze
behind your shoulder
where are you?
i am here,
licking my cream
licking my sugar
nothing else
That last line sounds the note of solipsistic finality: in peacetime or war, there is no escape from the solitary confinement of self. Yet how lightly the point is made, with a flirtatiousness that mocks, even defies the rather scary recognition embodied in “where are you?”
The book’s final poems are also Lukic’s last: ‘thinking in months’ writes the aftermath of a pessimistic diagnosis.
life was like a tiny colouring book, short and sweet,
returning now to a black and white fight,
the evil cells and the good cells, a simple story
before a long sleep, the only war on terror i am in
from ‘thinking in months’
Tatjana Lukic, a poet of the inner life, but also of the ironies that attend the mind’s to-ing and fro-ing between a given world and a private view of it, has built, using English words, a testament to her life; it is spacious, generous, and as full of joy as it is of sorrow. Lukic’s distancing techniques – her multiple ways of opening a lyric poem to participation in a big, un-lyrical world – relate her to the great Central European poets of an earlier generation, to the Polish Zbigniew Herbert and the Czech Miroslav Holub; perhaps Bertolt Brecht is a common ancestor. We can regret that Lukic is gone, but rejoice that her book takes its place among some of the best cross-cultural poetry written in Australia, alongside the very different poetics of, for instance, Ali Alizadeh, Kim Cheng Boey, Ouyang Yu, Ania Walwicz and the Vietnamese-Australian Xuan Duong.
January 1, 2011 / mascara / 0 Comments
What Came Between
by Patrick Cullen
Scribe, 2009
ISBN: 9781921372889
$27.95
http://www.scribepublications.com.au/
Reviewed by MARIA FREIJ
Patrick Cullen’s first book, What Came Between, explores the life of three families in Laman Street, Newcastle in the aftermath of the 1989 earthquake, and following another incident with earth-shattering consequences for the community: the closing of the BHP steelworks ten years later. These life-changing incidents provide the framework for Cullen’s twelve interconnected stories, some of which have previously been published in Best Australian Stories, Sleepers Almanac, and Harvest. Cullen’s stories feature individuals at different stages in life and offer us an insight into the existence of very different characters, whose lives are, in one way or another, in a stage of turbulence, tragedy, or change. The earthquake becomes a trigger; cracks appear in the walls where no cracks used to be, or were they always present? The feeling of slippage runs like stormwater through the stories: involuntary childlessness, ageing, love, secrets, and guilt bob under the surface like the whale calf in Newcastle harbour, which, inevitably, is in for disaster when he crosses the surface. For the characters, the secrets and concerns continually approach the surface, but since what lies beneath will bring suffering if brought into the light, much remains necessarily and frustratingly suppressed.
Cullen’s characters are Carveresque in their working-class roots and minimalist depiction. Cullen eloquently balances the line between that which is spoken and that which must remain unsaid, showing great restraint in his narration. Newcastle features as a prominent character in the story as the city itself provides the ground upon which these characters have built their lives. When it is literally shattered, they lose their footing and their unravelling is inevitable:
Sarah got up, dragged a chair over beside the wardrobe, and reached up and ran her hand over the wall.
‘This wasn’t here before,’ she said, tracing her finger along a crack. ‘I’m sure it wasn’t.’
Paul stirred and looked up. ‘It’s always been there.’
‘Well, it’s opened up some more now. I’m sure of it.’ (p 7–8)
For Paul and Sarah, the earthquake is the beginning of a falling-apart in many ways. Just the one crack—and yet, a wealth of secrets trickle from the past into the present. Their childlessness, Paul’s previous life, and Sarah’s illness make for an intriguing depiction of the life of an ordinary yet extraordinary couple. Paul’s breakdown, though neatly restrained, means he takes time off work, his focus turned to repairing what the earthquake has shattered. As he retiles the bathroom, he is able to reconstruct the physical order of his and Sarah’s life. Still, the foundations he is trying to recreate will inevitably be affected by the lies he insists on telling his wife.
For Ray and Pam, as the closing of the steelworks leads to the suicide of an old friend, the unravelling of old lies creates a fear of loneliness and abandonment. The emotional turmoil is subtly depicted, yet the dialogue rings true: ‘Please don’t ever leave me,’ Ray says in the night, his face buried in his wife’s hair. When Ray falls ill and his estranged son returns from Sydney, some of the most human of emotions—guilt, fear, and pride—truly come to the fore, and the proud behaviour of both father and son yields to something more important as love, yet again, is proven stronger and more important.
For the young man whose grandmother, in her old age, moves from her house in Laman Street to stay with her daughter in the countryside, Newcastle is a new beginning. Indeed, his luggage is lighter than that of the street’s other inhabitants. When his young girlfriend falls pregnant, they start a new life together in the Laman Street home, and its previous owner, somewhat surprisingly and disappointingly, never features in the story again. This couple, representing the possibility of change and rejuvenation, seem less credible in actions and reactions; but this is perhaps because of the vigour with which these young people go about their existence and this, in turn, due to their youth. Still, because of the ease with which their troubles are resolved, these two characters appear least realistic: their relationship seems at threat, by the ominous owls in the attic if not by their innocence, but their love persists against the odds. It seems that in a time of chaos and uncertainty, love is still a force to be reckoned with.
Cullen’s characters’ lives are beautifully reflected in the movement around them: ‘Fruit bats crashed into the fig trees, and flapped and fought and fell away to do the same thing further along the street.’ (p 55) Cullen creates a fantastic ambience through the depiction of the city and his wonderful detail: the ‘small red figs pinballing about beneath their feet’ (p. 155) mirror the microcosm he has built, its characters at the mercy of the larger forces at hand: by the ocean, with its sprinkling of coal ships on the horizon, his characters grow apart, and come together. Cullen’s use of light and shade, in combination with the vulnerability of the characters towards the elements and nature: the earthquake, the tree roots growing into the pipes, along with these people’s love for each other and their instinct to defend their marriages, relationships, and lives make for a compelling and engaging narrative that resonates far beyond its last page.
January 1, 2011 / mascara / 0 Comments
Sam is Melbourne based, obtaining her now defunct degree -Bachelor of Creative Arts (hons.) – at the University of Melbourne a fast-receding number of years ago. She runs SNAFU Theatre with her childhood friend and playwright May Jasper, and is only now learning how to dress seasonally.
The Shape
in the end,
the house empty
of course i realised
that i had dreamt of you.
a forcibly empty house
me drying my dishwashed hands
and suddenly crying,
catching myself,
and i remember dreaming
of your small warm hand
in mine.
how i had dreamt you into
my street,
how we had walked together
in the hot afternoon’s
half-light,
you as silent and content,
as i thought you used to be.
in my kitchen,
patting water on my cheeks,
i saw the largeness of
my grief for you,
breathing, living on
without us,
and all the ways i
would continue to pay.
III
It is his endless
morning glare
that hits first,
not buried beneath sheets
but encrusted to a chair
or
pouring milk into a bowl
or
slowly pushing the plunger down.
He is not expecting you
and that is his consolation.
Scraping him off,
touching the edge of the banister
you could very well not be there,
very well not be grinding yourself
into him.
*
It is four in the morning
when he gets home,
familiar through the sightless presence,
as leaning against templed hallways
he sees you, just,
a fluttering glimpse in a dimming eye
as his hands fumble
dumbly for switches and
pocket change, and he
doesn’t quite know who he is any more
when sudden light surprises the
reflection crouching in the bathroom.
Stained, searching through
mirrored gazes for eyes and
ears and the four small moles
that one day disappeared.
His body deflated into
a husk.
The moon has beaten him tonight
standing by the window, and
whether he will finish in your bed
is a question you wont ask,
as lives past are discovered
in the floorboards
the house creaking
with unexpected scrutiny.
He does not know you are watching.
Mornings were made for nights like this
as sobs and breath
not your own
numb themselves into light.
*
He drinks four glasses of water
and remembers, finally, to close the fridge door.
In this half-light
he is a unicorn, almost,
pressing his body down in
bleak inspection of what is still there.
And only one thing he can say:
No body is this here
No body is this.
Murakami
You go into a room, because the bedside lamp
is on. You don’t have to turn it off,
but you want to. You trip over
a bedsheet, but the whole time your
eyes are fixed on the lamp.
This is how M makes you feel.
You are so fixed on this idea, that
instead of seeing Brando’s tux shirt in
a Godfather poster, you think he’s
holding a soft drink container.
It takes several re-glimpses to
shatter that image.
January 1, 2011 / mascara / 0 Comments
Paul Fearne is a poet and philosopher working and residing in Melbourne, Australia. His poems have appeared in a number of journals including Westerly, Stylus, Unusual Work and verb-ate-him. His philosophical work has appeared in journals such as Consciousness Literature and the Arts. He is currently undertaking a PhD in Philosophy and LaTrobe University, and has completed a Master’s degree from the University of Melbourne.
A Dream of Coral
let the light of our hesitation bend around the moon
and clothe the sea in memories
let the sound of the morning
sweep this cloud of butterflies
into the uncertainty of tomorrow
there is a pause in the turning of the sky
it marks the sorrow the birds feel
that the winter has forgotten its home
and the snow is reticent to melt
a sea horse searches for its past
but the future is all it knows
and in time
it will become a dream of coral
and wander further
than it ever has before
The Regrets of Dragon Flies
a clothes line whirls in the breeze
on it
sway pegged dreams
and the regrets of dragon flies
a rustling catches our ears
it is the litter of autumn
and the wandering of our fears
in a rain that has not fallen for a thousand years
the simplicity of our forgetting
curls in a gentle mist
and reminds us
that the last wish of a starfish
is all the dawn needs
to chase away the morning’s cobwebs
and their gentle intransigence
a nervous pride of clouds
(a fellowship that has never known a moments rest)
gather up our best intentions
and scatter them throughout the sea
and into the hopes of time
as she whispers the trembling names
of all those lost silences
that have kept us searching
searching for the dust of the night’s companionship
and the kind wisps of longing
that sleep in the ancient abbey
we once knew as our home