January 1, 2011 / mascara / 0 Comments
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David Gilbey is Senior Lecturer in English at Charles Sturt University (where he teaches Australian Literature, Children’s Literature and Creative Writing) and President of Wagga Wagga Writers Writers. His new collection of poems is Death and the Motorway, (Interactive Press, 2008). In September 2008 David is writer-in-residence at Bundanon. He is currently editing fourW nineteen, to be published in November 2008.
Izakaya
My former students take me downtown
for Japanese food and drink
through postmodern fashions of Kokubuncho,
the entertainment district.
Hisae is suffering a post-Hawaii virus
after her sister’s wedding.
Bikini flu? I ask, after the swimsuit photos –
then I have to explain the joke.
Chiharu shows phone pics of her new budgie.
Call him Red, I say,
you know how Australians like opposite nicknames –
It’s because they live upside-down. Antipodeans.
I can’t stop being the English teacher,
even after eleven years.
Akane comes late, orders beer and hoya,
daring me to try this Sendai specialty: ‘sea pineapple’
a soft shellfish whose orange flesh
you eat with vinegar, a dash of soy and ginger to taste.
‘Sea mango’ would be better: more accurate for size
and flesh colour, more palatably oxymoronic.
I want sashimi and order tarakiku,
the soft, whitish, brain-textured convolvulus
of the male codfish genitals. Oishi.
Yuko settles for maguro – burgundy tuna –
with aromatic shiso leaves, and only pretends to choke
when I hail it as ‘marijuana tempura’
Akane asks me for some words for this month’s
food ‘n fashion mag’s slogan ‘Exeo’ –
Japanese latin wanting a youthful urgency.
I suggest ‘break out’.
Haiku Hike
I write in my shadow
a fool in nature.
Curves flatten to lines.
What’s a good word?
She’d climbed a eucalyptus fork
over a dead stump,
stretched her arms along the ghost gum’s
psoriatic bark,
half a world away
from the snows of Japan.
That was summer –
dryer, browner, greyer.
Now, in winter’s nervous sunlight
a single green blade splits a crack
in the lichened rock.
Crowshit olives.
We stand on the hill
like silent haiku: strange
birds in dead branches.
Writing Class Sonnet
One day I was watching TV
suddenly I saw a illustration of a biscuits.
I married a rich man. And my friend won a billion yen in the lottery.
So I plan to go to Australia.
And I am without passport. So I need to obtain it.
The hotel there was more beautiful than our imagination.
At the lunch I eat crocodile and lasagne.
I go to sea and swim enough with a shoal of fishes.
We saw many famous animals.
If I have a driver’s licence I drive Ayers Rock,
Great Barrier Reef, desert, and so on.
Finally I would like to play the star watching.
Of course I buy souvenirs for my family and friends.
Maybe one day I become English teacher.
January 1, 2011 / mascara / 0 Comments
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Ouyang Yu is a poet, novelist and critic, whose fiction, non-fiction, poetry and translation has been published in both English and Chinese. His latest collection of poetry is The Kingsbury Tales: a novel, published by Brandl & Schlesinger (2008). Please refer to his website http://www.ouyangyu.com.au/
I am a poet
There are many times I hit the rock bottom
& I write about it
There are many times I hit the roof of heaven
& I write about it
I am a poet
I’m not anyone’s poet
Not a working class poet
Nor people’s poet
I am the one doomed
To poetry doomed
To a future
Of clouds
A fleeting thought at one of the books short-listed in a shop window
Perhaps I’m sick
The world is sick
As the cities become more obese
Than obesity: o b city
I am sicker
When I decide never to read it for the rest of my rest
After it won something
And goes on to win more
English
I strike you dead, English
Language of the enemy
Even when you abuse me with one of your gentlest words
Calling me not good not good enough or very
Good
English
hongmaohua, red-haired speech
You think you are the Language
Of money
Looted
You think you are the Language
Of—
I stopped there only because something else happened
Something living
Something infinitely better than English
Happened five or six hours ago
And now I don’t want to write another word in this poem
Let the dead die the death
I embrace the living with the ease of a living
“I want to die forgotten”
In the Blockbuster City
1.
you are seeing yourself off
your car in the long-distance car park
when you arrive
you meet yourself
in the mirror
and take a digital photo of yourself
camera in hand
2.
you couldn’t meet your dad
he’s dead
you couldn’t meet your mom
she’s dead
you couldn’t meet these other living
people you know
you’d listen to a voice or voice message: I’m busy could you…
3.
footloose
mindloose
moneyloose for the end of financial year
mouthloose
eyeloose for a city on heels
earloose
fingerloose on the pulse of p-
4.
the blockbuster city is
one that quotes differently for the same thing
one in which people run vehicles stalk stall accents e/merge
one that can be booked for a few nights
one with galleries victoria where one doesn’t even see a work of art
one where you decide to retire early
to a hotel sleep
5.
the city grows more blockbusterly each person
something takes
nothing gives
creative zen crashes
ipod records no voices hears no fm except for a fee, no, for 2
cowon a2 available at bondi junction
the city takes all without distinction
6.
a city literally
of no original faces
an ariel view: a building behind another building
a close-up: someone wanking
a restaurant sign: thai to remember
feet plodding
a city into itself
Exclusion
By excluding us
They become them
By excluding them
They become us
You in me
And me in you
January 1, 2011 / mascara / 0 Comments
Ross Clark teaches part-time at two universities in Brisbane, Australia. Seven volumes of his poetry have been published (Salt Flung into the Sky, Ginninderra, 2007), and two chapbooks of haiku. He has toured his work as writer, performer and workshopper to city and rural Australia, to Japan, and through central Texas. He is currently working on a teenage verse novel trilogy and a DVD of himself in performance (with The Mongreltown Allstars). www.crowsongs.com
Chook, Chook
1
they have gone off, they will not lay me eggs. three chooks, and not a single egg produced. i need a china egg to encourage them by fooling them, but all i have is my shaker, my percussion egg, filled with seeds and painted gold, so that will have to do.
in the morning, they have laid their clutch of warm eggs; all of them brown, but i can celebrate my brilliant husbandry, golden as a percussionist’s egg, with a little jig, unaccompanied and careful, up the stairs to the kitchen.
2
from childhood practice, back when we sold eggs direct from our farm, we still date them all by hand, the phone-message pencil just right for the four or so our chooks produce each day. we give them to neighbours, visitors, eat plenty ourselves, always from the earliest date. whenever and however i cook them, i will be eating yesterday, swallowing the past, enjoying.
For the Next Seven Days …
i want to write a poem
so tough that
it hurls Uluru back into space
and dives down into the crater
singing
i want to write a poem
so revelatory that
God weeps with shock
i want to write a poem
so complete that
dictionaries illustrate every word
with a quotation from it
i want to write a poem
so minimalist that
when i open the page
to read it aloud (but
before i say anything)
everybody thinks of you
i want to write a poem
so lyrical that
the Amazon the Nile
the Yang-Tze
the Mississippi-Missouri
and the Murray-Darling
will flow symphony after symphony
forever
i want to write a poem
so soft that
when i read it aloud
my breath shivers on your nipples
i want to write a poem
January 1, 2011 / mascara / 0 Comments
Michael Sharkey has worked in publishing and editing, and has taught literature and cultural studies at several universities in Australian and elsewhere. He currently teaches writing, rhetorical analysis and American literature at the University of New England at Armidale, New South Wales. He has published essays, articles and reviews as well as several collections of poetry, the most recent of which is The Sweeping Plain (Melbourne, Five Islands Press, 2007).
The Demagogue Writes His Program
1
Nothing in writing so hard as the start
unless everything else in the work.
All of that countryside: where to begin?
In the forests he walked as a child
when the first buds appeared and the slow rivers surged
to the sea? Recollect bourgeois rubbing their eyes
at the unlikely sight of the sun, when the clearings were bright
as cathedral naves lit by the saints?
Later things: wandering lonely in crowds
to free libraries, galleries, parks;
all of those flophouse proprietors waiting
for cash that was never in hand?
Lyric fluidity won in the end
and he sang like a magpie in spring.
2
He watched the movies in his head
and wrote what the actors should have said;
the headlines’ chatter went in, too,
while cameras clicked and the tourists queued
at the door of his room: a modern mystic in his cell
reciting cures and casting spells,
a secretary taking dictation as fast
as a cobbler hammers a boot on the last.
He thought of the world to come, and smiled:
the final chapter would drive the fans wild.
Nothing To It
This is the place where nothing you’d think of occurs,
and repeatedly.
Visitors go down the stairs
to the valley alone:
there is no space for side-by-side travel
and no place to pause
till they get to the floor of the gorge.
Then they do not go far.
From the floor they cannot see the top.
From the top they could not see the place they are standing in now.
Now they can look at the lichen, the moss,
And the ferns.
Maidenhair’s perfectly still.
There is no breeze down here.
Fiddleheads, supplejack,
Bush-lawyer, past all those visitors:
gorse, angel’s trumpets, lantana, they met on the path.
Then the climb to the top. Till their legs start to ache.
And they say they saw nothing of note,
And they’ll never come back.
The Plaza of Hoon
The hoon is Australia’s gift to the world:
it was spawned at the nation’s creation;
barbecue sites and trolley-strewn malls
are its haunt; it is free of mentation.
Cowboy of cul-de-sacs, clearways and crescents,
it grazes on petrol and chrome;
it disguises itself as a slab of cold beer
that litters the place it calls home.
It travels in groups like a troop of baboons
giving tongue in the language of apes:
it eats and it roots and it shoots and it leaves,
and it comes in all genders and shapes.
Its ancestor spirits are convicts and oafs
from each class and each trade and profession;
it mates with a creature resembling itself,
and so it ensures its succession,
and having done that, it subsides with a grunt
to observe the career of its clone,
a dysfunctional loud simulacrum
without an idea of its own.
It’s a do-it-yourself sheltered workshop
where bigotry’s watered and fed
by talkback noises of overgrown boys
whose morals and ethics are dead.
So think of the people you cannot abide
when the time for gift-giving draws near,
and wrap up a hoon in the national flag
and send it away from here.
January 1, 2011 / mascara / 0 Comments
Jane was born in South Korea, but has grown up in Sydney, Australia. She works at the Museum of Contemporary Art and is inspired by paintings, ceramics and music – a lot of which figures in her poetry. Jane studied a B.A. Communications at the University of Technology, Sydney.
Other End
This is the dream that most people never have
unless you sleep
so little
at 3am.
It might be a wait
too long
till morning
when I am living again
& meant to help men with their desire for a drink
and never ending queries for another
story or reassured lie.
So passion
never comes easy to the men
who sleep sound
after
a terrible day. It doesn’t chase them, this
life and leaves them so free, I’m
constantly stepping over
a gap to make
no
sound – so
my limbs, how young is my heart & how flex, this muscle,
doesn’t keep me up, and waiting for the next day
or the next, or
to be done.
Black
After today, which really is the hardest part, I’ll
say nothing more & wonder
more
whether it was right
to ask him an easy question –
it’s put us back in touch. I’ll slip away
right away again.
I won’t come around
and see we both bought black
jumpers by the same
designer,
the same wool &
machine & make
but different cut, one for a man’s shoulders
and the other for a girl’s waist.
I’m sure another distant friend might buy
a similar garment to wear
while out for a drink &
I’ll think it’s him because I
look for him everywhere, even though
it was decided – the way
we feel
is not enough.
House
I imagine you sitting there on a box
but it’s alright, there are four hideous chairs & perhaps music, lots
of it, stacked,
you know where everything is.
Form:
is the driver to every artwork that you’ve bought
& the posters that you like.
Sometimes, we find another prison to love. Is
freedom an edge that you find on a stage (?)
I’m reminded when you engulf somebody, arms open
and cinch
her wooden waist
lacquered hip
it was always there. A song to grow into & find
amongst others.
January 1, 2011 / mascara / 0 Comments
E A Gleeson is a Ballarat based writer and Funeral Director. Earlier this year she featured at the inaugural Australian Poetry Festival in Castlemaine. Her poems have been published and read in Australia, Ireland and the USA. Gleeson was awarded the 2008 Interactive Press Best First Book Award for her poetry manuscript, which will be published later this year.
Making a different path
Plunging into the huge pile of rubble, digging through it
she rescued them, whole bricks abandoned for a chipped
edge or a flaw in colour, and then, when it looked as if
there were no more to be had, she went back into that pile
uncovering the halves, throwing them into the barrow and
then thrusting her arms deeper into the broken bricks, each
time going down further, fingers tipping the bricks, sliding
along them, feeling for length and then, gripping fiercely
with her finger tips, she pulled the new found brick through
the pile, setting the others crumbling and tumbling.
With the string lines curving across her block, she placed
the bricks across and down, three by three. She wove
the path across the yard, curving it around the place she’d
marked out for fruit trees, setting it beside the squares
that would become a vege patch. All evening, she carried
aching muscles about the house. Unused to the heft of work,
she filled a bath and eased her body in, stroked the cloth
along each scratched arm, dabbed at each blistered palm
and later, found herself clasping her hands as if she were
holding some hard won precious thing.
Sunday Afternoon Bush Walk
Eucalypts drip amongst the quiet voices
of strangers taking each other’s measure.
Fog clings to the stand of mountain ash.
We step out slowly. Mud sucks our boots
We scramble fallen logs, wade through bracken.
Cautiously, we move to higher ground.
Sliding alongside one another, keeping pace
with bits of chat, we slip in on other conversations:
film reviews, travel stories punctuated
with bird calls, snapping twigs. Paragraphed
by steeper slopes, the talk moves up a notch
hedges on the personal.
You’re telling us about your birth.
Doctors thought you good as dead
offered your mother special care staring
through Plexiglas at your ribs heaving
and sinking.
Rejecting this, she took you home. For fourteen
days and nights, she held you. Snuggled between
her breasts, dribbles of milk, temptation to suckle.
Her heart beating like a metronome.
Her skin. Your skin.
Her breath. Your breath.
We tramp along the sodden track.
Bursts of warm sunshine challenge
the winter landscape.
Is this all there is?
i
We spend the whole day together and then the next.
For me, it’s as if we’ve always had and always will
have a part together. Haio becomes my teacher. I
want to know how to behave in this different country.
I learn that it is not OK to eat a naked banana and eye
contact is not such an important thing, though I notice
that when we are part of the throng of motorbikes
surging along Tran Hung Dao, she turns right round
to talk to me. I am relieved when she leans forward
again, until I realize that she does this to read
the map and answer her mobile phone. I am not sure
of the protocol of gripping her buttocks with my thighs
but as my jeans take the dust from the buses we pass,
I am thinking about other things.
ii
Never have I felt such a part of a people’s movement.
There are more people on motorbikes on either side
of me than could ever fit in a Swanston St. peace march.
Haio weaves her bike through the city traffic as if these
days are all that we have. She wants to show me what I
need to learn. She cuts to the chase. She asks questions
that I never ask before a third date. She points to the people
whose disfigured bodies bend awkwardly along the pavement,
She tosses coins, chats to the locals, coerces the officials.
She takes me to see her friends and the paintings that she loves.
I feel as if I have met someone who might be a Buddhist, well
along the path to enlightenment, or perhaps that rare thing,
a Christian who knows what it is to love one another.
iii
When she is not asking questions, she is my tour guide.
I begin to understand why the figure of Ho Chi Minh
whom I feared in my childhood, will always be Uncle Ho
for her. She shows me what she wants me to understand
and says, “This is what you need to write your poems about”.
I want her to tell me that these huts made from split boards
and bits of tin are summer residences for the rice growers,
shepherd’s huts for the farmers, that way up in the hills
beyond the paddy fields are cosy cottages all decked out
with woven mats and polished teak and that behind these
are gardens full of vivid vegetables and bunches of bananas
bowing from the trees, but I know before I ask the question
that this is all that there is.
iv
Each time we pass the central Post Office, the man with
the gummy grin is sitting in his cyclo smiling at the tourists
because he does not have the quick repartee of the cyclo
owners with the clean cotton covers and the sunshades,
“Where you from, Madame?” “Ah my friend in Melbourne.”
“How can I help you?” “Special price for you, Madame”.
Tell me that last week it was different, that the tourists
hurried to his cyclo like children to a merry-go-round,
that he took them to the mountain statue of Buddha
and the huge church with its concrete Virgin Mary
and said same same but different and laughed at his own
joke and the irony of it all, but I know that when we’ve
ridden past late in the afternoon and he’s sprawled
across the cyclo, that every day, this is how it is.
v
Haio takes me to visit the children whose parents
were hit by the orange bombs. The crazy boy
who is tied to his cot with his skin dropping onto
the linen, yells at me. And the girl who seems to be
all torso and head, reaches out and pulls me towards
her as if to show that for a hug, a neck is not necessary.
There are children who stare blankly from misshapen
bodies and others who grin and giggle and bottom shuffle
towards us clutching at our hands, rolling us the ball,
peeking into our bags. As we walk from the last room
in the Peace Hospital where the children’s heads
are bigger than any of my questions or answers,
I turn and ask, “Haoi, what do you believe?”
She tells me, ” I don’t believe in anything.
I know that there is nothing but this.”
January 1, 2011 / mascara / 0 Comments
Ashley co-founded Egg(Poetry) in 2002, which sadly ceased publication in 2006. He is currently studying Arts and Education at Monash, while co-editing www.holland1945.net.au and singing for his band. His work has appeared in a range of Australian print and online publications and his poem ‘Ember’ was runner up in the 2007 Monash Poetry Prize. His first collection of poetry pollen and the storm (2008) was published with the assistance of Small Change Press.
endure
like Sophocles inventing
pain
her perfection
is made
knot
by knot
as she rakes the spyglass across the horizon
in one long smudge
as she leads him home
weary of visions
and
of fighting him, placating
his attacks
eating his
blues.
pedestrian
in the possible hush
of 6am the
road is dusted
in pastel-smoke
feet bully the pavement
and cars slip down the highway.
on rubbish bins
crows flick glances
like struck matches
and the wind
squeezes by, rustling
plum blossoms
with clumsy arms.
late night
I know there’s no way to stand out –
and it’s very easy
to make someone’s throat clench
with piano
and a montage or a bit of slow
motion, soundtrack
really makes
up for substance
but what have I got – just lines
on white
envy
and really, why bother when
everything is so obviously impermanent
I guess the great lie of our time is capture –
it’s comforting to believe
everything can be caught, recorded
and remembered
so we don’t have to appreciate
anything in the moment.
april
could we meet
somewhere else
in april
maybe
on stone
with rain beading in your hair
I’d listen for once and you’d be strong
I’d be able to sit still
and you’d be happy
for the first time since april
everything would work
and we’d be able to talk, without
feeling crushed by the weight of stars
their cold light, dry as wind
and the streets, empty at dawn
but full, of yellow leaves
and little hurricanes.
yokan
full moon
splattered on the field
stumps’ moot.
January 1, 2011 / mascara / 0 Comments
Tenzin Tsundue is a writer and activist in exile. He published his first book of poems Crossing the Border with money begged and borrowed from classmates while undertaking his Masters degree in Literature from Bombay University. His literary skills won him the first ever Outlook-Picador Award for Non-Fiction in 2001. His second book Kora is in its fifth edition having sold more than ten thousand copies. His third book Semshook, is a compilation of essays on the Tibetan freedom movement. In January 2002 Tsundue’s profile peaked when he scaled scaffolding to the 14th floor of the Oberoi Towers in Mumbai to unfurl a Tibetan national flag and a ‘Free Tibet’ banner down the hotel’s facade. China’s Premier Zhu Rongji was inside the hotel at the time. He is also known for his trademark red headband which he has vowed to wear until the day Tibet is free. Tsundue’s poetic voice speaks powerfully of the suffering of Tibetan exiles.
Horizon
From home you have reached
the Horizon here.
From here to another
here you go.
From there to the next
next to the next
horizon to horizon
every step is a horizon.
Count the steps
and keep the number.
Pick the white pebbles
and the funny strange leaves.
Mark the curves
and cliffs around
for you may need
to come home again.
A Personal Reconnaissance
From Ladakh
Tibet is just a gaze away.
They said:
from that black knoll
at Dumtse, it’s Tibet.
For the first time, I saw
my country Tibet.
In a hurried hidden trip,
I was there, at the mound.
I sniffed the soil,
scratched the ground,
listened to the dry wind
and the wild old cranes.
I didn’t see the border,
I swear there wasn’t anything
different, there.
I didn’t know,
if I was there or here.
I didn’t know,
if I was here or there.
They say the kyangs
come here every winter.
They say the kyangs
go there every summer.
Tibetanness
Thirty-nine years in exile.
Yet no nation supports us.
Not a single bloody nation!
We are refugees here.
People of a lost country.
Citizen to no nation.
Tibetans: the world’s sympathy stock.
Serene monks and bubbly traditionalists;
one lakh and several thousand odd,
nicely mixed, steeped
in various assimilating cultural hegemonies.
At every check-post and office,
I am an “Indian-Tibetan”.
My Registration Certificate,
I renew every year, with a salaam.
A foreigner born in India.
I am more of an Indian.
Except for my Chinky Tibetan face.
“Nepali?” “Thai?” “Japanese?”
“Chinese?” “Naga?” “Manipuri?”
but never the question – “Tibetan?”
I am Tibetan.
But I am not from Tibet.
Never been there.
Yet I dream
of dying there.
Space-Bar: A Proposal
pull your ceiling half-way down
and you can create a mezzanine for me
your walls open into cupboards
is there an empty shelf for me
let me grow in your garden
with your roses and prickly pears
i’ll sleep under your bed
and watch TV in the mirror
do you have an ear on your balcony
i am singing from your window
open your door
let me in
i am resting at your doorstep
call me when you are awake
January 1, 2011 / mascara / 0 Comments
Debbie Lim was born in Sydney where she works as a medical writer. Her poetry has been published in Blue Dog, Quadrant and Poetry Without Borders. She is winner of the 2008 Inverawe Nature Poetry Prize. She was a guest poet at this year’s Sydney Writers’ Festival.
How To Grow Feet of Golden Lotus
A mother cannot love her daughter and
her daughter’s feet at the same time
– Old Chinese saying
1.
Begin with a girl of five:
her arches will be firm
but she will not yet know real pain.
Soak feet in warm water and herbs.
Massage. This will be their last
pleasure, though recalled
with bitterness.
2.
Curl four toes
under the sole like a row
of sparrows sheltering under a ledge.
Bind with a long strip of cotton
or silk – whichever you can afford.
But leave the big toe free:
this will be her keel,
for balance.
3.
Pull tightly
as on the reigns of a disobedient horse.
Time will break them.
Strive to make toe kiss heel.
4.
Every second day
turn your ears to stone.
Unwrap the bandage and ignore
her crying as you rebind them,
each time tighter. Remind yourself,
as your own mother did,
that there is no such thing
as a truly liberated foot.
5.
Beware three terrible blooms:
ulcer, gangrene and necrosis.
They are insidious as a woman’s curse.
A toenail can take root in the sole
and left unwatched, the cleft
between ball and heel
nurses all kinds of enemies.
6.
Two years will train them
into pale lotus bulbs
of the most sensual beauty:
iron, silver or gold*
7.
When she is older
the mere sight of them
peeping from beneath a gown
will arouse in men
the most powerful kind of desire:
lust combined with pity.
She will walk
the walk of a beautiful woman.
8.
The smell she might live with
for the rest of her life.
But she will learn the art of beautiful
concealment: washed stockings,
draped hems and hours
stitching shoes
of the most delicate embroidery.
9.
A woman with lotus feet
steps through mirrored days
of privilege. She sits
under willow trees, works
tiny worlds with her thread.
A woman with golden lotus feet
will always be waited on.
There are just two things
she must never forget:
Always wash the feet in private.
Always wear slippers in bed.
* The binding process lasted for approximately 2 years. The lotus or bound foot was classified as gold, silver or iron according to its final size. A golden lotus referred to a foot no more than 7.5 cm long and was considered ideal. A silver lotus measured up to 10 cm, and an iron lotus was anything larger.
Extraction
The worms are shrunk in their tunnels
hiding apologies. The cicadas
are banging out a death trill.
While I sit with this ache in my jaw,
my souvenired pain in a bottle.
Up in the gutters, nests are falling
apart into shitty straw and the lawn
is a sea of green tips ripe
for amputation. I am sick of waiting
with this mouthful of gauze.
From inside, I watch you mow:
dragging your diesel heart
in crooked rows. You see only
the metre in front of you, trail
a blunted yellow wake. That vein
working in your left ankle
will be the death of you.
Summer sours everything too quickly,
especially washed skin. My mother sits
in the air-conditioned lounge
obliterating herself with symphonies.
Her mouth has turned into a violin
string, she can stay still for hours
on the verge of breaking.
The sun is an old medal
swung through days like this:
cicadas, heat, deafening afternoons.
This dull socket will keep me
awake tonight. If not,
I’ll pray for dreams of snow.
Girl at 6.20am
An ordinary street, suburban
in flat daylight.
But imagine 6.20 am
when the sky
is pale and slowly leavening
there is something secret happening:
cars parked silently
in driveways and dulled with frost,
and how the cold builds
a second skin
around bushes and letter boxes
so there appears to be
two of everything: one visible,
the other crouched inside, sleeping.
I could reach out
and touch a gatepost, turn
and walk up somebody’s driveway
if I wanted to.
Halfway down the road
there is a tree
I think is cherry blossom.
It leans over the path,
ignores the fence
of the garden it grows in.
Soon it will be loaded with white petals,
cause a sidewalk snowfall
before turning
into a brown skiddy mess.
But just now, as I’m approaching,
its branches are clean
and so dark they could be
stapled to the sky.
January 1, 2011 / mascara / 0 Comments
Jal Nicholl lives in Melbourne, where he is a secondary school English and philosophy teacher. His poetry has previously been published in Retort Magazine, Stylus Poetry Journal, Diagram, Famous Reporter, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore and Shampoo Poetry.
Audit
Subtract the tangible,
these pebbles smoothed unseen
by god, by water,
by machine;
let mortar
wear away the stone
of prison opened to the public,
and of private home.
Sculptor,
split the frozen tun:
release the grapes inside,
imagining
the chisel is your tongue.
The Annunciation
The messenger appears, his face
a bright mask over sleeping darkness,
but hazy, seeming an actor in
the kind of dream you have when you know
you’re dreaming. He reassures her,
in his old-fashioned gold-trimmed livery,
his sanguine complexion, the cool blue
light he casts around him, speaking
tunefully; he has come to tell her
that, suddenly (although it’s hardly news
in heaven) she’s at the centre of
the whole plan of creation. Congratulations!
You have been selected . . . he begins,
ceremoniously reading from the letter
whose seal he’s broken; but at some point
as the speech continues he stops reading,
adopts a more intimate tone, as he folds
and pockets what you’d assume
was meant to be delivered, and concludes:
So don’t you dare tell anyone–
of course they’d never believe you–
but if you do and it gets back to me,
I’ll come back and there’ll really be news. She thinks,
Were I to ask the name of his boss–
let alone for some I.D., who knows
what might happen? Perhaps she screams
beneath the whoosh of dazzling wings and arms
that clasp her as he whispers like
a gale in her ear, the name of the disease
he’s giving her.
He’s gone, the light gone
From her blinded eyes–but the street
outside the window he came in is squealing;
revived, she can no more cry than sleep–
it’s the supernatural child who cries, already,
to force her to eat, though she’s not hungry;
and soon she’ll have to talk to it, soothe
it with a song, devise a story
to satisfy the world, and keep it straight.
Father in Heaven
A lookout over wetlands, like
a cattle chute against a closed gate
in an empty paddock–
See how the heron drops a moment from
his equilibrium, how ducks
dive astutely and with open eyes.
Feel the advance of shadows that will
flood the roads tonight like sand
a tussock facing the sea. Thus
speaks the one whose likeness
you are, pointing to fields impenetrable
to a bored child’s imaginary
hide-and-seek. But you’re well
above the horizon here, as never before
those views you used to try to paint,
though you had to lie down in sand
or grass to frame, for example,
a closed street in the pose of a nape and shoulders
turning to follow a face–
their own. This one who made you
ejected you from shelter, or you left
after a certain age, because
that too was nature. The same now turns
his weekend face on you, having found the place
agrees with him as much as he
with it. Ceci n’est pas un oiseau,
you say; but see how the bird goes its way
conducted by his definite finger,
sped by the name this gesture bestows
as the sun strikes its wing like a window, and
past this horizon, unthinking,
as if it really were.