April 24, 2012 / mascara / 0 Comments
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Michael Sharkey has taught writing and literature in many universities in Australia and abroad for the past thirty years, and has published over a dozen collections of poems. He lives in Armidale, NSW, and travels between Australia, New Zealand and Indonesia.
John on Patmos
(Hartman Schedel, Poland 1440-1514: Queensland Gallery)
Real estate is wound up here:
where a path spills down to the sea;
no magnificos’ villas encroach:
the fish are allowed to be free.
An eagle, head bent like a quizzical heron’s,
keeps watch as the writer,
inkwell in hand
sits by a Matisse palm tree.
Above, remote, a child on her lap,
a woman’s enthroned on a cloud:
the writer sees no strangeness there;
his head and eyes are bowed
toward the text upon his lap
where stranger things appear:
the world in flames and children
weeping as it disappears.
The Nameless
Dreams grow refined
but hardly appear to get better:
the plot is the same:
the window or door
that silently opens
and two hooded figures
come in through the dark
of the room
to the side of the bed:
the dead siblings or parents
or children approach once again
to steal sweetness from sleep.
April 24, 2012 / mascara / 0 Comments
Brook Emery has published three books of poetry: and dug my fingers in the sand, which won the Judith Wright Calanthe prize, Misplaced Heart, and Uncommon Light. All three were short-listed for the Kenneth Slessor Prize.
The black hill looks to float straight out to sea.
Cars incline. But the driver’s eyes are raised
to an unvarying wash of night.
For a moment, just an instant, his gaze
is arrested by a tree beneath a streetlight,
a lean, straggly, unkempt bottlebrush he thinks,
and strangely, beneath the light, it is the focus
of his thought. It’s almost two dimensional,
as though it were the section of a tree
pressed between two sheets of glass
for microscopic examination. It stands for nothing
but stands as something, its shapeless branches
and drooping leaves as nondescript
as any failure of a man, any thought
whose time has come and gone and gone again.
He’s nearly home. It’s about to rain,
the wind is getting up and he can sense
an approaching chill. He’ll be home before the storm.
He’s shut the door. Locked the outside
outside. The gathering dark, the gathering cold,
all the unhoused, creeping possibilities,
the distresses of the day, tomorrow’s fears,
wolves howling on the Steppe, hyenas
around the stricken cub, roaches, slaters, snakes,
the tubeworm deprived of light, no mouth,
no anus, dependent on bacteria
to process food, the nonexistent nameless dread
that nonetheless exists with rapists, goons,
gangs of untamed youth, the super-heated words
of presidents and priests, toddlers fastening bomber’s belts,
and stepping out in supermodel clothes, crewcut men
in sunglasses sweeping children off the streets
and banging on the door; the looming nursing home.
The heater’s turned to high. The television
splays its cathode light across the room,
a cup of tea is cooling on the armchair’s arm.
That stupid, ugly tree, he thinks,
the light between its leaves, its immobility,
then the way it twitches in the wind,
what is it that won’t let me be?
All morning it’s been difficult to settle, difficult to harness
energy or purpose for all the things
I have to do. Charged sky,
sudden light at the horizon, grey, then streaks of blue, then
grey again. An unsettled sea,
white water contending point to point,
waves like another and another avalanche, unceasing noise,
sand compacted to a crimp-edged,
man-high bank and I can see,
then can’t locate, a buoy like a white-capped head
sinking and floating in the rip,
wrenched from its deeper mooring,
now driven in, now swept back out, tethered there
by net and anchor that, for now,
have new purchase in the sand.
Conceivably, should I be silly enough to surf tomorrow
it could be me entangled, drowned:
mistake and misadventure; bad luck.
In Switzerland they’ve flicked the switch and particles
surge round and round a tunnel
in opposed directions preparing to collide
in an experiment to explain how the universe got mass
in the seconds of its birth,
why what we touch is solid.
We stalk the irreducible, the constant speed of light unfolding
though the eye can’t see and the hand
can’t touch such magnitude:
time may shrivel, outrun itself, sag under accumulated weight:
end in our beginning: red shift, white dwarf,
rotten apple on the ground.
April 24, 2012 / mascara / 0 Comments
Of German-Russian heritage, Peter grew up bilingually in Sydney. MPU First Prize 2009. Third Prize Val Vallis Award 2009. MPU Second Prize 2008. Second Prize Shoalhaven Literary Award 2008. Varuna-Picaro Publishing Award 2009. Chapbook: ‘The Knee Monologues & Other Poems’ (Picaro Press, 2009). First full-length collection: ‘The Post-Man Letters & Other Poems’ (Picaro Press, 2010). Peter grows 103 heirloom apple varieties in Bundanoon, NSW.
Other Flesh
Bare front yard concrete driveway, a single
small frangipani shrivels its furrowed grey
elephant skin near the grey paling fence, up
the red brick steps hot in the sun to the threshold:
now speak. German. Another. World.
Brown linoleum hallway, or is it carpet,
to the dining room. Mother there, or kitchen?
Maybe just the spicy dream-world smells
from an Asian boarder’s cooking,
into the bedroom shared with Omi
where mornings we play ‘I spy’ in German,
the armchair with the polished dark
brown wooden rests that prop
my arm holding up a child’s head heavy
with listening to the white wireless,
the wide glowing dial, little green neon wand
I can move to the unknown reaches
of the unseen world full of soft maternal
English voices telling Argonaut stories,
the thrill of Tarzan’s chest-beat yodel,
Clark Kent closing the phone booth door
followed by Superman’s bullet flight,
the dial against which, listening, I press,
peacefully embalmed in fantasy like a baby
at the breast, my small nibbled thumbnail
to see the warm light
coming through all
that other flesh.
Besuch/Visit
contours in the sand/ konturen im sand
combed wind, wires/ gekämmter wind, drähte
up there at the estuary/ vorne an der mündung
a sudden thought of you/ dachte ich an dich
been there again clawed/ wieder da gewesen verkrallt
into branch moss/ am ast das moos
dragonfly wings about the heart/ libellenflügel ums herz
lightless/ lichtlos
Resumé
bröckelnde bäume der lunge
harzverklebte nüstern
das herz klirrt
die scheibe zerspringt, das messer
dies der tod der luft
crumbling lung trees
resin-gummed nostrils
heart pounding
the pane shatters, a knife
this the death of air
mohnerinnerungen verblassen
hart der strassenrand und gerade
nagle im schuh
möwe grell über der halde
dies der tod der krume
poppy memories fading
hard road’s edge, straight
nail in shoe
gulls livid over the dump
this the death of soil
kein sinken wie Ophelia
ranzige bretter, kellerasseln
das pferd verquollen
zahnlos, gischt
tod des wassers
no sinking like Ophelia
rancid planks, wood lice
bloated horse
toothless, spume
the death of water
im spiegel das gesicht wegrasiert
fern gewinkt, schon ans telefon
fliessend k/w und zH, abgelenkt
lebenslang vom staunen
dies der tod des feuers
face shaved off
in the mirror
half waving from afar
already phoning
running h/c all mod cons
distracted lifelong
from the wonders
this the death of fire
Acknowledgement: ‘Other Flesh’ has appeared in ‘The Post-Man Letters & Other Poems’ (New Work Series Picaro Press, 2010)
April 24, 2012 / mascara / 0 Comments
1981, Sam Byfield has published a chapbook (From the Middle Kingdom, Pudding House Press) and his first full length collection Borderlands is forthcoming. His poetry has recently appeared in such publications as Heat, Meanjin, Island, Southerly, The Asia Literary Review, The National Poetry Review, Cordite and previously in Mascara.
Split Earth
Morpeth’s bulging river and rich
farmlands, the sky heaving itself
down in great drapes.
We browsed the bric-a-bracs
and lolly shops, climbed
an old steam engine and listened
to the rainsong of frogs amongst
the ferns and old stone walls.
The bridge rattled, its heavy presence
hanging on into its second century,
shading the flash of reeds
and river mullet. While the women
drank coffee I walked with Thom
to where the gardens met the river,
took a photo of us, arm-in-arm,
obvious brothers despite our
different hair lengths,
despite his axe man shoulders
and my clean shave. Our eyes
were an identical blue, though
not long since the accident his smile
didn’t reach them, cautious as
an animal crouched in barnyard
shadows, relearning trust; his scars
jagged and red, like split earth.
All this year I’ve carried the photo
with me like a talisman,
watched his eyes and mouth
telling different stories, as if I could
stop the world from hurting him
further, from taking any more
of us too soon.
Escaping the Central West
Out on the flat land, the yellow land,
driving from one country town with
a funny name to another, in the old
blue Cortina, the sun making wheat
of dad’s beard. John Williamson’s
singing Bill the Cat, about a moggy
who loved the budgies and wrens
and ultimately lost his balls.
Sporadic signposts, nothing
but sad little dams, wire and sheep.
One flock grabs our attention—
animated discussion in the front,
dad still refusing to unfold the map
before the realisation sets in that
it’s the same flock as two hours
and two hundred miles ago.
*
It’s a story that’s passed through
the years until how much is real
and how much is myth is hard to say.
We lasted two months out there.
My parents must have fought
like hell, though those memories
haven’t stuck. We headed back east
in the middle of a flood, the whole
Central West beneath a foot
of ironic water. Night time shut
the light out and we drove blind,
just hours of water threatening
to swallow us, to breach
the Cortina’s rust and rivets;
and a storm in Dad’s head
that wasn’t about to abate.
April 24, 2012 / mascara / 0 Comments
Philip Hammial has had 22 collections of poetry published, two of which were short-listed for the Kenneth Slessor Prize. He was in residence at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris from August 2009 through January 2010.
Affair
We should concern for this affair. Affair
of there ought to be some in kind who refuse to accept
a stand-in (not the first killing that dumped its government)—
white public lovers who dealt as best they could with the spellers
who encroached upon Madame’s overly-ripe sensibilities & were not
in the least bit successful, for, look, there, a naked someone
actualised so close you can smell her as though
she was dead but in fact is still alive, just back
from a holiday in Egypt, or Senegal, or China (Clarity,
some help here) like one of those debutantes who extract privilege
with impossibly dainty fingers, morsels
tidy, morsels teeming with, Thanksgiving just
around the corner blowing its horn, strutting its turkey, “When
the saints come marching in” it’s Madame who leads them, baton
twirling, bobby socks dream girl, 1954, I wasn’t in that marching band;
if only I had been I might not have come to this: my life
as a fetish not what it’s cracked up to be, can’t just
walk up to someone & ask for a good spanking, call it
one for the road or one for the angels in the fountain who fall
like hail on the replica of my hard-won grace temporarily won
when I took the hand of a gentle killer & we slipped through
the gate, eluding the Big Boys, the thugs who guard
the Chocolate Farm, a bouquet in my other hand (how
it came to be there I’ll never know) for Madame who refused
to accept it, our affair long over she insisted with a smile
that she’d acquired in Egypt, or Senegal, or China (Clarity,
some help here).
Sartorial
I’ll have it—the courage to wear what I kill. It
being difficult if not impossible to say at this point
in the proceedings when I ended up in bed
with the wrong family because my admirers
(that motley crowd) are demanding one of my fly-ups. Molly,
have you seen my wings? Now that I’ve finally mastered
the art of remembering where I’ve left my glasses
I keep losing my wings. At least with glasses
I can see to find them, no more groping around
on the floor on my hands & knees. Wrong, as in family?
Wrong. Wrong as in now that I’m up & away (she found
my wings in the oven where I left them to dry) at 30,000 feet
the oxygen masks have dropped & begun to sway
hypnotically, a dozen passengers in a voodoo trance
dancing obscenely in the aisles & the rest engrossed
in a past lives therapy session from which they’ll emerge
as clean as scrubbed boys for Sunday school. Me,
I’m with the voodoo mob, ridden, as we all are,
by Mami-Wata, the mermaid who, when she’s finished
with me will leave me with a small token
of her appreciation—the courage to wear what I kill.
April 24, 2012 / mascara / 0 Comments
Alan Pejković was born in 1971. He has three university degrees in Sweden: an MA in English language and literature at Gävle University, a BA in History of Religions at Uppsala University, and he holds teaching degree from Stockholm University in English and Swedish language. Presently he works on the last phase of his PhD dissertation on liminal figures in contemporary American novels at the English Department in Uppsala, Sweden. Besides academic work, he works as a freelance writer, translator, and book reviewer. His poetry has been published in Swedish, English, and several languages in the Balkan area. He is also widely published in theoretical and literary journals in the Balkans. For BTJ (a leading supplier of media services in Sweden), he regularly reviews books from ex-Yugoslavia as well as books on literature, language, religions and other similar areas.
Sentimental Street
The memory dropped sharply overnight. A freezing point.
Give me a drop of my old street.
Time haunts me, fills me with doubt.
The image of the aged boys, ruined girls, gardens in bloom.
The image flows backwards, changing prisms, transparent crystals.
I stand at the parking place. I sit at my office. Just a point in time.
The street is still a valid point in God’s report on me.
The street punctuates my future.
My Mistress and I at the sunny Afternoon
I am extramaritally yours, my mistress of the erogenous zones.
I stand in your shadow.
You play the violin, I adore your high heels.
Your stocking blasts a hole in my eyes.
Nylon sea. I am drowning. Whistling wolves in my ears. Air rushes from your mouth.
Enclose me in the space between your teeth.
A Boundary Lover’s Poem
I love your fence surrounding me, your words shutting me in, your staying with me till morning fires build up a wall.
I adore that you contain me, insert me into your love.
You have me inside you like a screaming fetus.
You include me in your collection. You form my boundaries.
You add me to your gallery of destroyed borderlands.
You burn my limits to unrecognizable geometrical patterns.
April 24, 2012 / mascara / 0 Comments
Anthony Lawrence has published twelve volumes of poetry and a novel, In The Half Light. His awards include the Kenneth Slessor Prize, the Australian Book Review Poetry Prize and the Gwen Harwood Memorial Prize. The Welfare of My Enemy is his forthcoming verse novella. He lives in Newcastle.
from The Welfare of My Enemy ~ a verse novella
A clear blue day in a black time.
I was waiting, then moved on as the alarm
of my pulse went off. I put two fingers
to an artery in my neck to monitor
fear, confusion, anger, apprehension.
Blood responds to being laid open
to all kinds of emotion. A life of trouble.
I studied track work updates, timetables.
I found stations with waiting rooms.
Those with ticket offices I underlined.
I began my search in the lit confines
of the head. I travelled with your name
and age, the looping swirl of your laugh, idiosyncrasies,
your shoulder scar, your habit of shooting the breeze
with strangers, homeless park-haunters, law enforcement
officers, taxi drivers… Wherever I went
I made notes. I left thoughts on a voice-
activated, digital recorder. The worst
thing was, I always returned with a pain
in my side, as if I’d tried to run a marathon –
a stitch that worked its way into my chest
and stayed there, throbbing. As for the rest
of my searching, my need to find out why
and where and when, I made my way
into the world, bypassing imagination
and its litany of scenarios, and I welcomed
the legal, usual, rule-by-thumb-by-numbers-
and ordered systems of engagement until I was over-
come with exhaustion and information. As a last resort
I drove to Mount Victoria, where we’d fought
over where to go for dinner. Who stormed out
and who gave in, who took the blame, who spent
the night with a blanket and a pillow
on the floor, whose blood flowed
faster, under pressure, who did what
to whom, and why did we constantly shout and fight?
I pulled into an old weatherboard
cinema’s car park. I could hear you, turning over in bed
and shouting, so I turned the radio on. I opened
the door and inhaled the pine-
scented air. Was it snowing, or
was it fog in the parking lights, giving another
angle to a thought of approaching snow?
I had nowhere and everywhere to go.
Lithgow, where we’d gathered magic mushrooms
as the prison lights burned into the gloom.
Bathurst, where we stayed in a bed
for three days in a cold white room in a bed
and breakfast. Jenolan caves, where
you abused a guide because her
flashlight kept wandering while she talked.
We were together and apart. We walked
to and from each other. Now you’re gone.
I’ll keep looking for you, but not for too long.
Your memory is the dull, cracked shell
of a list of words: Loving, Wild, Unfiltered, Dysfunctional.
~
The nightjar’s eyes are ajar, the little raven
eyes the ground as if it had been given
landing clearance. A ten year old boy
walks under two birds on his way
to the shops. He does not see them
as he is seen, from a distance, by a man.
A man has been watching two birds
above a small suburban park, the hard
morning light unspooling in his hair. The boy walks
towards the end of his life. The man takes
what he needs. Time is under house arrest.
Two birds leave the scene. As for the rest
of the story, reading between the lines
won’t help. What happened has now gone
to where guesswork turns to grief.
The witnessing birds, the belief
that order can be found where
chaos plies its trade. Terror
can be the sound of departing birds
or a child being approached, then led
or carried away to a waiting car
outside Tenterfield, Wyong or Caboulture.
~
He was into austere Eastern European architecture,
Kraut rock, graphic novels, Elizabeth Taylor,
swoffing for bone fish and baked beans from the can.
He was open, kind, loved animals, box kites, and when
he could, he’d hike into the mountains, camping out
for days. Here is a photo of him, soaking wet
on a cliff-edge at Govett’s Leap. It had been
raining all night. He lived life to the extreme.
He came home with a mountain devil pinned
to his oilskin. His hands were cut and lined
with dirt. He’d fallen as he tried to climb
out of a gorge. Two weeks later, his name
was in the paper. Missing in the Megalong Valley.
The search was on. That was twelve years ago. I see
him where they failed to look, which is where
the track veers left then opens out, under cover
of a canopy of dark, withholding sky.
He’ll not be found. His bones are lichen and clay.
April 24, 2012 / mascara / 0 Comments
rob walker has three published poetry collections: sparrow in an airport (Friendly Street New Poets Ten), micromacro and phobiaphobia (and is currently looking for a publisher for his fourth.) He lives in the Adelaide Hills, South Australia, dividing his time between writing and teaching. He is also a member of the unique jazz/funk/impro poets collective which is Max-Mo..
Tropeland. Surreal estate.
In the Land of Trope
boxes of matches spontane combustiously,
self-ignite like passion.
Vampire bats appear as garbags snagged on barbed-wire fences
Butterflies float skyward like liberation
In the Land of Trope street lights go through the phases of the moon
while the real moon waits for the traffic lights to change.
Deep serene ponds resemble your eyes and babies’ cheeks are gardenias
In the Land of Trope ears roar like the ocean
when you hold them up to your shell.
Cellos are the waists and childbearing hips of
country girls.
Cotton wool confined
to bathroom cabinets knows it’s a cloud
forming over the ranges.
The day sky tries to be as blue as the child’s pencil
while the night
leaves itself deliberately empty
for the distant sound of a lone
dog
In the Land of Trope sweat from armpits impersonates
cinnamon bark and vanilla pods
Similes assimilate later as comparative as a comparison
In the Land of Trope dark sky splits white lightning apart
and all poetry is black except for
the pink bits
Silver coins are rain-filled sheep hoofprints.
Clocks at 2 a.m tut-tut that you’re not asleep.
Mountain scenes are almost as realistic as paintings.
Surreal estate.
Every autumn leaves fall
in love.
Drums beat like a
heart.
In the Land of Trope dogs feel as sick as a man
wheels are as silly as eccentric children
and tacks never feel flat.
In the Land of Trope rainbows come blank
so you can colour them in yourself
from ultra-yellow to infra-green
In the Land of Trope pins are as neat as houses,
rabbits breed like the poor. A whip
is as smart as a sadomasochist
In the Land of Trope
money is mute and
humility talks.
In Tropeland
It’s better for you
And metaphor me
Sluggish returns
The dew dragged that giant slug from
the retaining wall again last night
Perhaps he was indecisive
on the up/ down question
Perhaps he has a one-second memory
and constructs his journeys randomly
Perhaps he was lost
Perhaps he just wanted to leave me
a silvered graph of yesterday’s
All Ordinaries Index
Poetry of the New Millenium
it’s all entropy
and things bleeding
into something else.
i’m tired of hearing
about your lover
and shards of things.
your journey holds
no interest.
your maw
is just a mouth.
shut it.
April 24, 2012 / mascara / 0 Comments
Mal McKimmie’s first volume of poetry, Poetileptic, was published by Five Islands Press in 2005. Poems from this collection were developed into a feature program by ABC Radio National in 2006. The Brokenness Sonnets 2 was published in Take Five 08 (Shoestring Press, Nottingham, UK, 2009); other poems have appeared in Australian anthologies and journals. The following poems are from The Brokenness Sonnets & Other Poems, to be published by Five Islands Press in 2011. Mal lives and writes in Melbourne, Australia.
His and Hers Homunculi
When I knocked on your door & you opened it smiling
the beam in your eye
knocked me & my mote flying.
Assured you were a placebo & I was in the control group
I took part in this experiment.
It was all a lie — I have the symptoms to prove it.
In the morning I will tell her how a fat, buzzing, blowfly-yellow moon
flew into the car & beat its wings against the windscreen while
I drove through the night to her door.
This morning I opened my door to the conclusions of Loss:
bouquets of poems, a tideline of foam-white flowers.
I wonder when I will meet the lover who sends them to me from the future.
Be forever dead in Eurydice, Rilke advised.
Berryman thought Rilke needed to ‘get down into the arena and kick around’.
(Henry said Rilke was a jerk.)
Would I love you if Neruda did not write:
Quiero hacer contigo lo que la primavera hace con los cerezos
(I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees)?
Orgasm, a scopolamine moment—
briefly, as in a police line-up:
all the usual suspects.
‘You are not alone’ the Goddess sang, dancing around my grave.
And finally I heard the legend of Eurydice’s head.
In the dream, the fact that I was dead
enabled me to write the poem
that I gave to the beautiful woman.
In the language of the deaf the sign for beautiful is beautiful,
the sign for calm is calming,
& love & happy each require both a hand & a heart to be invoked.
Shy man, 45, GSOH, NS, SD, Tourette’s syndrome,
seeks beautiful woman 18-25, GSOH, NS, SD, Echolalia.
Her: Poetry is like sex, it goes round & round; that’s why I’ll hang on with you.
Him: So I’m a good poet, but a bad lover?
Curse the prosaic who reduce the aim
from loving to living, from O! to I. (Diminishing even punctuation.)
The fourth magus was a woman.
She turned from the Bethlehem star & gave
her gift for the child to her own children.
Only if I move this glass paperweight
will the snowflakes inside it fall soft as syllables
on her skin, her upturned face, her hair.
In the hospital-fever nightmare, her father was the attending doctor
handing her not the child but the placenta
& ordering that it be raised to adulthood.
The lonely man with his ear to a drinking glass against the apartment wall;
not to hear his neighbour’s words, just to know she’s there.
Her: Aieeeearrrgh!! %$#*&^@*&^%$#@!!
Him: We’re having a baby! We’re having a baby!
The world continues because women were once children.
The world is imperilled because men were once children.
You were a 5′ 6″ upturned hourglass; we were in the kitchen;
& all the women I had ever loved passed before me one by one
while I cooked a perfect egg.
from The Church of Doubt
(whoever has ears to hear should hear)
V.
I am telling you that you do not know Love.
You throw the word at this person, that:
—I Love him, I Love her—
You throw it even at the whole world, & at God.
But it is a ball that bounces back to you, the same
Colour, the same size:
Nothing has changed.
So you throw it again, & then again.
Do you think that when I say the word Love
It returns to me?
It travels through the hands of all because none can grasp it,
Travels through wood, metal, earth, through infinite spaces.
At the very end of a universe that has no end
There is a child who has been orphaned by religion:
Its only desire is to play,
Though play cannot be said to be a desire.
When I utter the word Love it travels
Over weeping distances to that child,
Becomes a ball in its hands
& there it remains.
VI.
If you ask me if I believe in God,
I shall say No.
If you ask me if I disbelieve,
I shall say No.
I have one foot on soil, on earth,
That is to say: in the tomb.
I have one foot in water, in ocean,
That it to say: in the womb.
Why should I want to live but not to die?
Why should I want to die but not to live?
Before birth, I was or I was not.
After death, I will be or I will not.
Between birth & death I AM.
The brain is of the body
& shall die with the body: There is no Mind.
What is not of the body or the brain—is Soul.
The brain is of the body
& shall die with the body: There is no Soul.
What is not of the body or the brain—is Mind.
Soul & Mind—One & The Same.
& One & The Same is also something else
Which is neither Soul nor Mind.
A word in a bowl; Bowl another word:
Soul fills Mind, Mind empties from Soul.
The Christian empties his Chalice; the Buddhist
Empties his begging bowl.
Arm in arm, Thirsty and Hungry go into the tavern
To eat meat, drink wine, & sing.
VIII.
For members of The Church of Doubt
The way forward at every crossroads
Shall be revealed by where, dizzy from turning, they fall.
& each time they fall they shall fall
At the feet, the jumbled bones
Of a corpse
& two bones shall point them in a new direction:
Wish Bone & Funny Bone.
& for a short time thereafter they shall know the way
& knowing it shall dance as a corpse dances
Just before it becomes a corpse:
As if dying of joy.
April 24, 2012 / mascara / 0 Comments
Ali Jane Smith’s first poetry collection, Gala was published in 2006 as part of the Five Islands Press New Poets Program. Her work has appeared in journals such as Southerly, Cordite, and Famous Reporter. She has recorded readings for audio Cd and performed in schools, universities, pubs, cafes, shopping malls and festivals. She is the Director of the South Coast Writers Centre.
Poems as Dolly Parton: A real live Dolly
Up close you can see
the texture of my skin.
The smile that was always mine
the eyes full of thoughts
of you and the other people
I care for. Of the world
and what can be done.
If you take my hand it will be
the hand that you know.
The touch that you have grown
used to and never grown used to.
The voice most of all
shows the things that change
and never change
like a long, long love affair.
It’s easy to hear what’s been lost:
the range, the clarity, but
in my voice now you’ll hear
all the joyous moments
inspired thoughts, desolate
hours, true griefs, and loving gestures
you have known.
Poems as Dolly Parton: Only Dolly Parton album you’ll ever need
I know you love
the dirt-poor dreaming girl
who lets you forget
the hours and pains in
writing, singing, playing, looking pretty.
The show that lets you forget the business.
I know you like the stories.
You like my heartbroken women.
My happy singing women. My ruined
but still hopeful
lost and longing never despairing
picked up and dusted off
women who know the cold truth and carry it
alongside warm hopefulness.
You look at me as I
smile out at you from your tv
a photograph or the stage
when I sing and laugh and let you see
a glistening tear that doesn’t spill.
You want me to mend
your hurts and forgive.
To see the good in you, but
the pain and cruelty as well.
To know
and still love you.