Janine Fraser
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Janine Fraser’s book Portraits in a Glasshouse was published by Five Islands Press, Series 10 New Poets. She has also written numerous books for children, including the Sarindi series published by HarperCollins. She lives in Riddells Creek, Victoria.
Red Tulips (1)
Tight brown
Fists shoved in dark
Earth pockets
Latent with
The rage of life’s
Short round
Put up their
Leather-red dooks
And deliver
A knock-out
Pummel of punches
In Spring.
Red Tulips (2)
Cut
They continue
To grow in glass
Adding
To themselves
About an inch a day
As reputation
Growing on decease.
Outrage
In the mouth
Of the water jug
They pour out
The peculiars
Of their common
Trouble
Voluble in
Their predicament
As Plath––the ink-
Blot of
Their throats a dark
Puddled jotting
Last fevered
Poem got out on
A gasp
The flame
Going out in them
Putrefying water
Petal drop
Shocking as blood
On the hearth.
Remembering Stonehenge
Mid April, there is this fractal of a second
Hand sweeping the clocks bland face,
Through a day whirling with wind gust
Swirling the parchments of elm
Into a mushroom circle dotting the grass
Beneath the slow grind and twirl of
The clothes hoist hung with a rainbow
Line of briefs, line of socks you peg in pairs,
Stripe of shirts cuffing your cheek.
You know a mushrooms natural history––
Science of spores dropped from the hem
Of the circular skirt, the minute
Mycelium rippling out in the eternal
Pattern of water disturbed by a smooth
White stone––know the rings expansion
Is nothing more than the law
Of urban sprawl, the vociferous animal
Eating out its patch. All the same,
This mythic round of pithy plinths
Pushing up on stolid columns, is as magical
As muttered lore of faery,
Mysterious as Stonehenge. There
Last year in a fine mist of the weather,
You circled the great hewn rocks
Along the gravel path, the guide in your ear
Making a monument of date and data,
Dismantling the mystic. The sky
Gave up its clouds. Huddled under
Your black umbrella, you surrendered
Your ear-plugs and let the grey stones
Speak for themselves––of the ground
They’re rooted in, the light they melt into,
The trembling spaces between.