by Lisa Gorton
smiles.
Idol dolls Idol dollars slip trimester
Captor audition gentle massaged newly wedded
Track smooches arrival ivory hype emotional
Attention bar tab bravery
Replica escort love’s blood laws lawless
Stream afield flirt stay flirt goes.
Rebel the bells licence amorously bravery.
Inside Edward Hopper
Brenda Saunders
Room in New York, 1932
We are in the front room upstairs. Just your usual rented brownstone. Apart from the piano. We only came to look at art and now we’re inside a painting, held by the dark frame of the window at night. He’s not talking to me. He’s posing, pretending to read, stretching the paper into black and white shapes. I tinkle a few notes. Waiting. Electric light can be so brittle. It sharpens the space between us. My red dress has become the focal point in the picture, flesh tones soft against mahogany. Some guy is watching from the apartment across the street. He thinks I haven’t noticed. I should pull the drapes, block out his angle of vision. But then we’d never get out.
Nighthawks, 1942
There’s no stopping him: he went off in the middle of the night. Said he was going out for cigarettes. I’m not in this picture. There’s no door, so I don’t know if I could get in. Or how he will get out! He’s sitting in there smoking, watching the couple at the counter, well the redhead anyway. The waiter is making small talk. Passing time. They are all shaped in a diner window. Separate, like extras in a movie. Artificial light freezes the frame, draining the colour. He’s always looking for the story beyond the painted surface. But this time he’s gone too far.
Jivin’ With Bonny Cassidy etc.
Jessica L. Wilkinson
never the same
night—never the same
light in the feet
dark devil in the heel
the dress got wet—
i cut it off—i lost
control—rolled off the bed
//
the fault was all stylus—
how it beat the rhythm out
the groove—flicked
the heel
‘cross the boards of the J.C. Hotel—
shaking, grinding
skip, kick & flack
tr
specifics track the mental map
of a night well spent—
… dot is the line that solves two points
heel toheel
play it loud, louder again
the dress got wet—
i cut it off
i lost
control—
//
the drink sunk in—
i swigged the heat
drew out the sweat
slips down the arcing spine—
shredded moments in a salt-licked
time—
viscous liquids all shook up
in the dense light of a dusky pub—
the buddy system—lava lamp
that won’t dissolve
louder, louder still
the dress got wet—
i cut it off
i los t control—
//
mischief can’t control her hands—
i stole the gin—
four fingers
down their throats—
and one was mine
and it was cut
(signals to the floor—
a point
two
bodies in a field—free-spinning dandelion drift
matching feet
bonny lass,
bonny class
bonny stylus groove
|| :
the dress got wet—
i cut it o ff
i lo st cont
rol
: ||
fell off the bed
and bonny laughing out the window
says “come on let’s go—
Last Goodbyes in Havana
Sarah Holland-Batt
After Carver
Midday cracks like a cool blue cup.
We drink a last rum among the tanned couples
and kiss pre-revolutionary glass to our lips,
smooth and honest and scratchless.
Beneath us, waves smash the Malecon
with a force that could break our lives.
Your eyes are hidden behind your sunglasses.
Your hand shakes. Now and then you turn a page
of The Dangerous Summer and sigh
accusingly. We have cheated, certainly. Lied.
Days we have fought float over us effortless
as grease. Soon I will take a night flight to the Pacific
and in Manhattan a woman is waiting
who you have taught more than enough
about patience and her possible life.
You tap your knife against your plate
and turn a page. Down the cliff, Cuban boys
are diving off the stonewall into distance.
Their young bodies gleam with promise.
They kick down, then rise from the water like seals.
Le Cimetière du Montparnasse
Vivian Smith
I was almost drifting up the avenue
leading to the tomb of Baudelaire.
Names were flowing back into my mind –
my year in Paris 1959 –
Sartre, Ionesco, Jouve and Ponge –
when suddenly I saw a quiet group
looking for some place they could not find.
It proved to be the grave of Vallejo.
Who were they, self-contained and whispering,
students, fellow poets, refugees?
I’m sure they must have been Peruvians,
they knew his work, his worth, his world.
They crossed themselves, and stood there, full of care.
Leçons de Ténèbres
Clive James
But are they lessons, all these things I learn
Through being so far gone in my decline?
The wages of experience I earn
Would service well a younger life than mine.
I should have been more kind. It is my fate
To find this out, but find it out too late.
The mirror holds the ruins of my face
Roughly together, thus reminding me
I should have played it straight in every case,
Not just when forced to. Far too casually
I broke faith when it suited me, and here
I am alone, and now the end is near.
All of my life I put my labour first,
I made my mark, but left no time between
The things achieved, so, at my heedless worst,
With no life, there was nothing I could mean.
But now I have slowed down. I breathe the air
As if there were not much more of it there
And write these poems, which are funeral songs
That have been taught to me by vanished time:
Not only to enumerate my wrongs
But to pay homage to the late sublime
That comes with seeing how the years have brought
A fitting end, if not the one I sought.
Little Book of Mourning
Kevin Hart
i.m.JHH
Winter
Dark freeze in Charlottesville;
The drinking water’s grown small teeth.
Bare room: I
write till dusk
In dusty radiator heat.
Clocks graze on me all day;
I hear the silence of two crows
Then look down at my arm:
Not even your shadow’s there to touch.
Inside
I only speak old words:
They keep in with the dead,
They leave their doors ajar.
Some words are corridors
That lead us to the dead
And we can trust their dark;
We pass a hammer, sure,
We pass an anvil too
We pass a stirrup last;
And then we find the dead
Curled up, inside, asleep,
With our names on their tongues.
On the Mantelpiece
My father doesn’t know
That he died years ago:
He looks out for a while
From 1965 or so
And I look back, although
It chills away my smile
To see him with a glow
At dinner, in the snow,
In full-on sixties style
Not knowing then the blow
That was to knock him low,
And scrapes me like a file.
Parachuting
They dropped you into France when young
A town up north (I went there once);
Your squad was braced behind a wall
And you could see the man up front
Go left and his big head go right
And you threw up, you said, and ran
Across the street when shouted there
And fell down too, no time at all.
You showed me medals only once
And a weird wound just once as well,
A mucky hole that sucked in flesh
On each side of an upper thigh.
Now you’ve gone down again at night:
No river and no fields beneath.
Downstairs
I walk down there
Because I must
And feel each step
Is less than just
And blank a thought
But can’t ignore
A shadow’s sigh
The furnace roar
This is the place
Where darkness grows
This is the place
My father goes
Loans slip
Jane Gibian
Perfect phrases for the sales call :
50 things you want to know about world issues and
How to survive without a job : practical
Working overseas : a working holiday guide /
Why men earn more : the startling truth behind
Leadership for dummies /
What’s eating your child? : the hidden connections between food and
Money and soul : the pyschology of money and the transformation of
House rules /
The alchemy of finance : reading the mind of
Consulting for dummies /
Lumière train
Darby Hudson
I’m sitting by the silvery train tracks, under the moon, in a leafy auditorium.
Tons of steel and light approach from the wings of the stage
and thunder through with warm flashes of amber luminescence:
the train windows, shaped like animatic frames of old film-reel negative,
flicker by at 18 frames a second.
Just enough to bring the commuters back to life
Marrickville
Fiona Wright
Later that night, I cut
the plastic boning from the bodice of my dress:
no need for structure, over summer.
There were bruises
on my knees I didn’t recognise.
I saw us all that day, all day
projected on a big screen:
the bathtub underneath the orange tree,
crushed grass imprinted on my shins,
your cat-like eyeliner, the warm
sangria out of mugs. My feet grew numb
beneath my hips. Saturation.
I still felt overseen
when I walked home, alone and shouldered.
A black light flicked behind a balcony,
a woman, neon-lit,
crushed out a cigarette
and turned to kiss, to give
a kiss. It takes
three keys to open my front door.
Mateship
Chris Andrews
Was it eupepsia? I wasn’t thinking:
Why does everything have to be such a rush.
Or the mottled weather? I wasn’t even
wondering how indignant to be about what
when the media and self-interest provide
reasons to keep me indignant all the time.
Walking to the station, I had a vague sense
of what it might mean to feel real affection
for the things — the patterns of energy-stuff —
in the world, and, being one such or many
myself, to adjust them here and there in right
but unnecessary ways. The shadow-pools
in the street seemed continuous with a night
like a party spilling from a mansion split
into flats along a canal, an open-
ended night full of divergent adventures,
novelty lamps, doors ajar, strange languages
and splashes. Then a vaguely familiar guy
with his elbows out came up to me and said
“Usually I think, Life will sort you out, mate,
but this time it looks like life has to be me.”
Mediterranean Time
Andrew Sant
The swarthy plumber who sets a time
to fix the taps never comes. Water
drips in nearby limestone caves
with less regularity from stalactites.
Church bells clang, now in a frenzy,
then once only and, much later, once again –
shuttered solitude now in silent streets
during the heat of the afternoon. In the shade,
on dusty ground, thin cats yawn.
Hibiscuses expose their sexy throats.
Should the plumber come, after
a siesta’s done, he’ll likely find
no-one home. He may later phone.
The sun shines hard on a limestone landscape
from which, block by sawn block,
the villages have risen as did – but how? –
megaliths during the Neolithic.
There’s no division of colour, honeyed,
between what’s man-made and the land –
the villages often atop the coralline-
capped mesa-like formations.
They look down on tiers of ancient cultivation.
Olive lizards spurt in and out
of the drystone walls – a species
endemic to the island after the sea
gushed into the Mediterranean basin
with cataclysmic swiftness.
The Romans called the landfall Gaulus.
Its stratified cliffs are the Miocene
made scenic. Marine fossils
in a fanned museum line up
under glass, put a contemporary shine
on geologic time; another case displays ancient bones.
Perhaps of a distant, distant forebear
of the plumber who, in this farrago,
shrugs off haste, short north of the cliffs.
Meeting the Relatives
Richard Kelly Tipping
They’re on you before you know it,
careering around the corner in that
flashy ball of light – curious, energetic
and eager to share the fun. You’re it.
Is that really you lying by the television or
slumped in the front seat, still alive?
You reach for a phone to call your mother
but she’s saying don’t worry darling,
I’m here, peeling away from your astonished
face another translucent mica flake.
There are layers of faces within you now,
each one vibrant with self-determined life,
fascinated by your stories, waiting their
turn to speak. You settle back painlessly
knowing the news can’t be all bad, it’s past!
These people you’re descended from, who seem to
know you, are saying that they own you
as you float on your back in champagne,
their faces are thought bubbles, popping
your elevated, delighting brain.
A voice deep inside you, which could
be your own, is saying Let’s Go …
Meeting with the Same River
Bai Helin (translated by Ouyang Yu)
In the spring I met with the afternoon of the same river
When I found that the sorrow inside its body
And the hidden language of its gestures
Were surprisingly similar to someone else’s tragedy
Once I went so far as to open my mouth and speak the dead’s secrets
In summer or even when it was colder
I kept silent or when I walked alone on the bank
The person who liked swimming at night
Acted the way a bird did in the water
On many occasions I go upstream along the river in search of a shoe
Because no one understands how to talk with the river
A lone snow crane on the water does not know whether to step forward or backwards
Melbourne ode
Matt Holden