The Best Australian Poems 2016
Page 8
I laugh and say: the death of my father
has not made a gardener of me,
no, not yet.
A. Frances Johnson
In Flight Entertainment
‘no more blues’, that’s not a promise
there’s no traction or policy in the blues
all those bars are too long a cycle
to make for twittering views
no more plaints or graces
no thanks, ‘watch and listen carefully’
enhanced performance, premium economy
‘a loss of consciousness’, ‘oxygen will flow’, ‘settle back’
it’s a field day under the smoky hills
what does my tray table say about me
the colour of my life jacket, indeed, my life
‘woke up this morning’, that line’s been used
an immense dark blue sea nothing like the Pacific
it’s a long way down, it’s a long way home
even the clouds are small
perhaps something scary or precious
will break loose as the screens fall
what if there were no more blues
everything white and cloudy, ’nothing to see here’
does Europe seem safe
there are checks again in the Schengen zone
‘strong margins’, more landings on Lesbos
ancient songs for peace, love, weddings, thanks
‘persons of interest’, abductions
the last Commodore rolls out of the factory
what do you do with your hands
time is pressing, ‘enjoy the service’
‘the cost of complexity’, alive in the aisles
‘full of self belief’, ‘materials handling’
showers in Cape Town, sunny and dry in Lima
your own youtube channel must be full of likes as well as gripes
as the news disappears into itself, by jings it’s hard
but not so hard as no more blues
and there’s New South Wales or whatever it was
or will become, cultivated white squares and a haze
‘being a personal trainer’, ‘a true Aussie lifestyle’
from Port Macquarie to Wagga Wagga
which state would you settle in
‘the Australian dream ticks all the boxes’
welcome to the Gold Coast, five minutes from the beach
no more blues, it’s all white from now on
‘a loss of consciousness’, ‘settle back’ –
Jill Jones
takk for alt
they line up neatly
like a class best behaved
no whispering today
there’s a view of the sea
earshot of the factory
the road lies still
the fjord is still
are two stillnesses the same?
*
not every Hardanger gravestone says
but it’s the most common thing carved
thanks for everything
is the loose translation
for what is it thanks can be given?
*
tell me the sky – how it is, one more time
tell me the stream’s strong words
say after me
what I have meant
you know the things to do
they’re day-by-day
known to season
there is the need for a fresh coat of paint
remember to bring in the washing, the cat
(how many cats ago was that?)
and haul the boat before the storm
end of the day know all is done
du lever i vart minne
still living in our memories
høyt var du elsket
you much loved
there’s thanks for being dead as well
for getting out of the way
(no one puts that on a stone)
*
stand longer in my silence here
for it is love to stand
go with the mountain in my boots
because you have a touch of sky
the colour goes out of it
sky down and earth up
everything tending to night
*
here turf is weather
and weather’s a roof
my day and my night one
all are bones
clean as the dark to which we whistle
or else I’ll be damned
Kit Kelen
Limbo
Why shouldn’t a miracle be at the primary school disco
lurching up the dancing queue of the limbo line
where the father of Jayden, the boy with cerebral palsy,
has his arms hooked under his son’s, so the boy’s almost
walking, almost
dancing
when every boy and every girl, all around the limbo world
is getting ready to shimmy under that broomstick?
The DJ is a seventeen year old kid
in a rainbow vest his mum made him.
He’s holding the stick.
I’m watching, for nothing other than the hope
that he doesn’t raise it when Jayden’s turn arrives
that he keeps it steady as the music says Hey,
how low can you go? and one by one the kids tilt
their supple spines backwards, hair dangling,
the jerk and eye-roll, the shudder of splayed muscle
as Chubby Checker croons liiiimmmmbbbbooooo
till it’s Jayden’s turn; his dad drops to one heavy knee,
slips a hand behind his son’s head
and shimmies him under and through - contorted, crooked -
then back up somehow
while the DJ holds that stick immoveable, no sleight of hand
and the man does not duck his own head or scramble under
so I can only think - focussed on tipping his boy carefully
into the world beyond, unscathed –
that this father, flexed hard in awkward genuflection
passed through that solid wooden hurdle
that it dissolved for a single second as his barrel chest breasted it
because, still cupping the frail tendons of his son’s neck,
he was suddenly on the other side.
Cate Kennedy
Spatial Realignment of Jam Tree Gully (John Kinsella)
John Kinsella
Getting away with it
It started as a joke.
I couldn’t write anything, so I
stole a few short lines
from Robert Creeley,
then drove real fast
without considering the destination.
Soon Basho’s frog was leaping
out of a woodblock
& into my notebook, though
I wasn’t crazy enough to toss
Elizabeth’s fish back into the sea.
Before I could cite the cento defense,
I’d won the Blake, the Newcastle
& the Ethel Malley urn. Now
the truth is out, I’m crawling
through the stink
of a sewer, struggling
to breathe.
The bottom rungs of the ladder
are impossibly high,
while a sniper waits
near the manhole to blow
my head off.
I dress in my shame every day—
a suit of beautiful words
I long to call my own.
Andy Kissane
Foxstruck
Dinner done, dishes draining, the fire
a red glow in its dark box, I step outside
beyond the porch light, the grass
stiff with frost in the home paddock,
the night sky shelved but for the bright paw
and nose of the Dog Star chasing a hare
in the scudding dark, the
almost
forgotten name of a flagship tossing
into view in a time before typhoid,
cholera and sweetened damper, the gorge
rising in the dip where shots rang out
last night, our feral neighbour licensed to
kill anything that moves, floodlit
and whooping just beyond our fence line,
which a deer can clear in a moment if only
she knew she’d be safe here, but what’s a fence
in a forest of stars? The cold eats fingertips
and ankles. If I had flares, I would light them.
Makes no sense how we got here. Makes
perfect sense: a fox, frozen, almost
touching me. Three red paws on the ground,
one white lifted in mid-step, a thousand
tiny hairs aspark in the moonlight.
Breath a small vapour, electric.
Eyes like river stones, that old language
of fire held high in the brush-stroked tail
pulsing between us, two feet of charged
ground sunk without sound in a heartbeat,
the mist made mystic at knee-height.
Foxstruck. Standing alone in a paddock
pouring electricity under a night sky
blinking cold atoms without answer,
blood quickening the slow burn of fox,
tricky as history, the fire before and after.
Shari Kocher
Bringing It All Back Home
After Allen Ginsberg’s First Party at Ken Kesey’s with Hell’s Angels
Hot black night thru melaleucas –
cars rest in moons of yellow
fallen from poles that hiss and burr –
and stars blaze above in navy linen.
The tops of flame trees breathe
insects that drift in the warm breeze.
And parents in the drive, tend
barbecue and smoke (acacia, gum),
pretending happiness, but their eyes belie.
Their tired son in leather jacket sweats
the cool and itches in the dark, rubbing
tobacco and weed, furtive in corners
while other leather jacketed boys smoke
dope under the front yard citreodora –
purposeful, concentrated – and way
too cool for school. I cross the lawn
and beer can litter to climb the porch steps.
Two boys in army shirts slump
at the screen door, half-hearted guards,
smoked-out, listless and benign
like domestic cats.
Their girls dance. One in scarlet tights
and long dress, sweat in her hair,
kisses an energetic boy, who leans
in to her on the lounge floor.
Her boyfriend guard doesn’t notice,
he looks across the lawn, stoned,
smiling a welcome like Buddha.
Others talk on couches, but most
move to the music – twenty of them –
to the vibration thru the floor.
They sway in the middle of the room
and bend like Vietnamese huts in wind.
I join them and lift my arms
to the new, sudden rush of sound
like war, the beat we came for.
Pounding, shrill, the music charges,
electric, we rock and shift like choppers
in a storm. A red-haired boy,
tight-jeaned, moves like Nureyev.
He smokes a roach, eyes shut.
I look at his crotch and want to marry.
Simeon Kronenberg
Kangarilla, Summer, 2016
There’s the creek, the white road, and the woodlot,
where trees long planted stretch now for clean sun;
and – light’s conjurement – there’s the summer’s throw
of half-gold grass upon the stilled breast of
the hill: but hunkered under that, eruptions
in the mantle, rocks that are the real deal,
the bone inside the meat. We meet each morning
for the hard work of the day: pick, spade, wrench,
wire, drills like noisy arrows straight into the wood,
to prick the land with relics of our time.
We’re of an age now where the comfort’s in
neat excellence when the task’s complete.
Chaos once cast charm. It doesn’t now.
We lift and dig and grip as balm to loss of joy.
And everywhere and nowhere is the boy.
Verity Laughton
Wax Cathedral
Two shot glasses, lit from within
by sixteen year old Lagavulin.
A lemon tree, cut back with the imprecision
only a bread knife can bring
to organic joinery.
A magpie lark that lost its one-
winged mate, and who then
imprinted on her memory
despite being shunned, melodically.
These things occupy the end of each day
now that we are settled
in the house we call Wax Cathedral
named for the way
light makes the walls run and pool
to where shadows should be gathering
like evidence of the time we spend
on departures and arrivals
that play themselves out, daily.
Yet light prevails, in corners
and on skirting boards
like thin applications of saffron paint
and where a tree has survived
our ministrations, a bird avoids a life
of hearing itself, which always leads
to mimicry. And before the rooms
have darkened, atramentously
we turn our lamps on
the weave in their linen shades
like screen-printed rain
our glasses shot through with afternoon light.
Anthony Lawrence
Blow Job (kama sutra)
Made in Heaven series, Jeff Koons 1991
She and he are the yellow of daffodils,
canaries, Smiley faces, margarine or
Post-it® notes, Sponge Bob, tennis balls,
piss in snow or a warm golden shower.
He stands before her in act of faith,
his shaft caressed by the lemon Venus:
she takes his person into her mouth
in an act of throat-loving oral congress.
Blown in glass it is eternal primavera
in this paean to the pleasures of the tongue:
deep flexion and a repertoire of licks, a
shameless urge to suckle like the young –
a hunger comes upon me. O lord, please
feed me – I’m going down on my knees.
Bronwyn Lea
Poem
Adultery fucks a family up as much as poverty
Because the memories can’t run away from home
That’s a lot of hatred from a mother
Nothing I’d care to discuss right now
Because the memories can’t run away from home
Once a kid learns guilt he’s going to stumble
Nothing I’d care to discuss right now
Never grew any taller, just sadder and angrier
Once a kid learns guilt he’s going to stumble
I quit school to escape the staring eyes
Never grew any taller, just sadder and angrier
I know that nobody ever changed history, but I had to try
I quit school to escape the staring eyes
The sun, the silence, the nothingness
I know that nobody ever changed history, but I had to try
Part of what makes me interesting for science
The sun, the silence, the nothingness
It was like an acid eating into me
Part of what makes me interesting for science
>
You’re beautiful. What’s the emergency?
It was like an acid eating into me
No sexual act ever commenced, instead I trashed the room
You’re beautiful. What’s the emergency?
Everyone’s got their own version of the truth
No sexual act ever commenced, instead I trashed the room
Just want to see if property feels pain
Everyone’s got their own version of the truth
Maybe some day, but not today
Just want to see if property feels pain
It’s going to end in infinity, and if there is no infinity
Maybe some day, but not today
Can’t stop love from doing its damage
It’s going to end in infinity, and if there is no infinity
That’s a lot of hatred from a mother
Can’t stop love from doing its damage
Adultery fucks a family up as much as poverty
Emma Lew
Lovestore
To request the presence or attendance of
to wish for, long (to be, have, do)
‘toe a line’ meaning stand in a row
Of things requisite
a vehement pang
eyther of bodie or mynde
pursuit of paltrie trash
a fit, outburst or state of strong excitement
Amorous impulse, lewd behaviour (obs.)
senses relating to passivity and activity
affections, tropes and intimate apparel
limping made (un)conditional
Thy darling sin which to enjoy thou couldst
resist all others (least thou thinkest so)
frigidity, the proper passion of water,
sometime accidentally hot
Kate Lilley
A House in Switzerland
Dignitas, Zurich
So this is what it comes to: a small blue corrugated house
set in sifting snow. After months of planning, self-argument,
all agonies exchanged for innocuous things:
two wineless glasses, a space to sign your name.
The last decision is kindly trivial (milk, dark or praline?) –
a closing sweetness for the mouth. You know how it should go:
the first draught to dull the stomach for that second blow.
But even the nub of melting on your tongue can’t mask
what’s just been swallowed. Your insides buck, surprising you.
A late request for water is denied; it would undo everything.
And so it ends with this: your dying wish a sip of water