The Fremantle Press Anthology of Western Australian Poetry

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The Fremantle Press Anthology of Western Australian Poetry Page 18

by John Kinsella


  or their centres gone like a ring of keys

  where they stalled on the slopes and were covered in.

  The blown end of a Lee Enfield

  makes the weapon seem a crossbow.

  There the isolated spine is curved as a bow

  the loose ribs are warped arrows

  and the earth has kept them close

  in its grip and quiver, only sometimes

  losing an arrow in slow and gentle course

  out into the daylight.

  You begin to mend them. Firstly

  you give them back their bodies.

  You pick the rosette from a man’s chest

  pluck each petal of blood and let it drop into obscurity

  (there is no copy of it back at home).

  His was the famous rush towards the machine-gun pits

  but his medals were put too deep, and by the wrong side.

  The stem cannot be seen, nor the bullet that gave seed

  passing through sternum, heart, lodging in the vertebrae.

  And the uprush of bloom into the khaki.

  Bruises, those coloured moulds, lessen and are gone.

  Ignore the condition of his arteries, whether the joints

  gave trouble — they were too young. Your miracles

  are for the body and now its dreams,

  for these have lapped the gaunt face

  like the midnight waves of evacuation.

  But there’s something arcane about the clay

  where fierce Turkish sunlight baked it around his body.

  The particles became magnetic, but the magnet’s

  pulling wrongly: you’ve stripped his oppressors

  from him but he sprawls down facing East:

  the light jostling his body, its energetic tearing

  calling him to fight — this is where he is intense

  this harsher light must be Australia.

  He sits up, slowly, exactly as machinery into place,

  like a fold-out cardboard shape with savage detail,

  the machine-gun straightening up, locking its steel legs.

  The sudden racket as shots begin, chronic and nervous …

  He will not return as one who went to die well,

  coming home like a kind of migrant

  strange and unaccustomed, to be made a boy again

  — city boy to find his streets

  or country boy finding the bright train back

  as through the eye of a needle

  unthreading his name from the obelisk not yet built.

  To grind away Mondays at the office

  or the callous-breaking afternoons on land,

  dreaming of food through the other war of Depression.

  Beside the wireless, monument of the everyday,

  strong again, voting conservative

  as he mostly would, forgetting violence

  until the next war, seeing that one through

  or dying again. Or being again returnee to a time

  where the world view, his slow meccano

  would crumple, seem obsolete.

  Barbecue of the Primitives

  They stand in a roughish circle: a row of backs,

  a muddling Stonehenge, half tourist,

  half ritual. As the fire is carried out

  in boxes, a male and dormant thing, assembled

  from clinking cylinders, thin pipes

  curling like snakes into the coupling place,

  hissing until the match bomps them into flame.

  The hot air pouts and silkens,

  or crimps like someone beaming down in Star Trek.

  The red portable ovens, standing

  like UFOs and calling the wilderness

  to sit around with its own ether blue as flame.

  It pre-empts the liquor, and perhaps the light,

  both will fall on the picnickers

  like something strong, pre-figuring.

  If the city stands fifty dry kilometres

  towards the coast, under the radiation

  of what it means to be human: this ether of bush

  hits them like the weightless falling

  of neutrinos, passing through without sensation,

  like silent speech. But

  only teeth will beam them back

  to being primal, and the firejuice of steaks.

  It is the only time they give up speech.

  They eat, as far above the sky convulses

  outward to the tufted body of an eagle

  high on ozone and lean entirety of hunger.

  Like pets, the cars sit under trees

  or curl into their gloss out in the heat.

  The insects now seem utterly demented:

  each beat a coin in the air’s strict metre.

  Something is being counted off, by ones.

  Ode to Skin

  Knowing that you, my skin, live flakily faster than I do

  makes me sad. Is this manic depression?

  Under the Mount Fuji thighs of a Sumo wrestler

  you mostly sag like bags of dough.

  To think: you dry from us like little wings.

  You’re eaten into heaven by mites.

  After callouses you return, but Saints, sinners, sots

  are skin people who may just lose the lot of you.

  Tattoos are humming birds mating for life in you.

  Like fingerprints, honestly us. Death stays true.

  And a tattoo of an octopus between a woman’s legs.

  You were all over me, she said. I’ve got you under …

  After operations Orlan has worn her famous faces:

  beautiful, or pumped fattily into you to spoil you.

  Mastectomy’s new skin is a breast by line not mass,

  a word to reach not touch. Then touch again.

  You contain us, everyday outlive us, are never less.

  We leave your limits — to live in the darkness direct.

  We Called it The Engine

  Nightly like a deeper and steelier sun the diesel

  cranked over then thumped out its metal songs

  of electricity, 32 volts in the darkroom batteries.

  This otherness for darkness, its steady beating

  on farms beyond the powerlines, a slow gunnery

  on cold nights, a standing rhythm in summers.

  You held the crank-handle and heaved it with

  a bunned hand: thumb held aside so the diesel’s

  chance back-firing wouldn’t break your thumb.

  Stopping it was worse: reaching past the heavy

  -spinning flywheel to the governor’s lever, pushing

  bare fingers against bull-steel massiveness, pushing

  till it died. If you let go too soon the black heartbeat

  re-started flanking over as it pushed back, resisted

  your thin skin your small bones your fear.

  Annamaria Weldon (b.1950)

  Coracle

  Light laid us bare, beyond the familiar

  copse of Norfolk Pines down the end of your

  street, crossing the sand without you. No place

  to lean at the edge of the sea that dawn

  at the beach, only salt-splintered wind. No

  comfort in recalling shared, early off-

  shore hours you’d called cold as a blank page.

  Only winter swell, grave skies, tilted planes

  of luminescence plunging to misty

  shade, grief’s blurred peripheries.

  Except for the wreath. Its painful details

  held our gaze (unfurled promise of rose buds,

  glossy leaves), frail, red-green coracle that

  saved us from foundering on time’s broken

  rim. Its buoyant bob and bright blooms granted

  a few moments reprieve, as though you breathed

  still with ocean’s lift and fall above that deep.

  Until insistent cross-currents plucked

  each petal free
and gently as mothers un-

  curling young fingers from treasure, drifts

  pried loose those twined stalks, undid the circle.

  Kristy Jones (b. c.1950)

  The Past Still Lives

  You tell us to forget,

  to move on and look to the future.

  But the past still hurts us, chokes us,

  every time we see old pictures,

  hear stories from our people

  and read the journals of the invaders.

  When I close my eyes, I can see the faces of the old people,

  the expressions I see will haunt me forever.

  Made to wear chains around their necks,

  cutting into them, deep.

  The horror still lives inside us,

  their children’s children,

  permanent memories in our hearts.

  We won’t forget, can’t forget.

  They were proud people,

  still deserve to be proud people.

  We won’t throw away what they fought for.

  I will stand up and be counted

  with my people any day,

  teach my kids what little I know

  and I will never be guilty

  of what the invaders were guilty of.

  I hope I never hurt anyone

  as much as Australia’s history

  has hurt our people.

  Sally Morgan (b.1951)

  I Can Count

  I can count

  1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5

  I can spell Annie

  A – N – N – I – E

  I do jobs

  go to school

  eat stinky soup

  But I’m still not the Annie

  they want me to be

  They call me Annie

  I answer to Annie

  But they don’t know

  who I really am

  They don’t know Janey

  Tim

  Nancy

  Emmy

  Dot

  Inside

  we are all secrets

  dreaming secret dreams

  of another life

  My language name

  is still hiding

  When I go home

  and see Mum

  it will spring out

  like a seed sprouting

  Till then it’s a secret

  Me

  on the inside

  is a secret

  to the outside world

  Only way to stay safe

  from the world of this place

  World of school

  work

  bossing

  World of forgetting

  World I don’t understand

  I am like Janey

  I keep my secrets hidden

  Janey Told Me

  Janey told me

  her most secret secret

  Her real name

  I told her

  my most secret secret

  My real name

  We promised each other

  to keep our secret secrets safe

  Me and Janey are good

  at keeping special things safe

  Zan Ross (b.1951)

  Absolute Daily Disposable

  I

  These wide avenues, twenty fathoms deep

  the whale hansoms crowd

  arcade gaslight like death each shadow tells

  Flaneur

  we are this depth or surface explored

  phrenology, barnacles on the back

  sounding, sounding the sperm

  blue killer right

  whale sliced into, rendered the same as

  read us, read us, read ME — disposable

  stories: we are all whores for 15 minutes

  II

  elevated flesh detected, detective

  Thar she blows! surface,

  beauty skin-deep, and what we have to

  sperm blue killer

  clues in the by-way, rendered, but

  she mustn’t tell, read this:

  blood flow arcs the Seine / Rhine /

  Thames / Hudson / Mississippi, the Atlantic

  sounding, sounding the

  Persian / Chinese carpet / brooch / slippers / crystal

  menu without price — consumption

  III

  Nantucket / Albany / Plymouth / Nagasaki —

  we fall in military, scientific invest-

  igation sounding, sounding

  rendered to the largest common numerator

  telescope / sextant — the way is clear

  right blue sperm

  killer out on the avenue, arcade — read

  interiors of whale oil lampshine, soft

  as your thigh, Flaneur — go on

  detect me. All clues provided I am

  nothing if not professional.

  IV

  You are nothing if not professional straight

  commodity harpoon out, quill pen

  poised gaslight — read the inside of my

  thigh, lips and their interiors on the

  off-chance, avenue killer

  right sperm sounding, sounding

  blue and brass the next morning

  on the bureau, your keys / my key —

  there’s only one door. Clues

  detect you in the crowd, Here and not

  forgotten — flanerie on every table.

  Wendy Jenkins (b.1952)

  The Silence of Mussels

  Listening posts

  we used to call them

  river pylons

  thick with ears

  tapping into

  who knows what

  At half-tide

  they would be tuned

  to both worlds

  slicing airwaves

  above the surface

  filtering what passed below

  through fleshy lobes.

  What they

  heard

  shut them up

  for good

  a long time back

  or is this silence

  even now illusory

  their sound

  the clap of a castanet

  the beat too slow

  or fast for human ears.

  Dolphin Sightings

  1. First time

  The first time

  we saw them together

  was at Deep Water Point

  whether they were

  four or five

  we couldn’t tell

  the rhythm

  of their surfacing

  being more akin to music

  than mathematics

  breath

  riding the gaps

  like shadow notes

  2. You were talking

  The second time

  they were right in by the shore

  at East Fremantle

  traversing and doubling

  the same stretch of water

  and you were talking

  about the space

  where arrival and departure are

  the same thing

  about trying to hold

  that moment

  as vision and tone

  about how sweet

  and sad it is

  unspeakable

  unspeakable

  you know?

  3. Flatlining

  At the still point

  of the argument

  (my silence

  now equal to yours)

  I saw them break

  the surface

  at the opposite bank

  two of them in unison

  and a third

  tracking

  in a kind of

  counterpoint

  the man in the kayak

  stopped his paddle

  at once (ecstatic)

  and slid smoothly soundlessly backwards

  on the tide flatline still trace

  about which

  dolphins blipped and jumped

  li
ke a fibrillating heart

  Rod Moran (b.1952)

  A Memoir of Birds

  The rainbows of silk threaded

  Through the Cape lilacs were lorikeets,

  Sulphur bangles on their throats,

  Wings tie-dyed with green and purple.

  They dined there all day on split berries,

  Until night poured black vino and ice

  In a deluge through the boughs.

  I don’t know when I first noticed birds.

  Perhaps it was climbing the jacarandas

  Lining the driveway of my childhood home,

  The family Chev mottled lilac.

  I’d float in an aromatic water

  Of bloom clusters fragrant as musk,

  Propped like a vane in a smooth fork

  And watch cormorants fly to the river.

  (I imagine the same mystery of wind

  Tugged at Da Vinci’s elbows,

  Pondering a luff of gulls in the harbour).

  From those trees I also saw pelicans

  Spiral slowly down hot afternoons

  Of blue and shimmering condensations.

  A friend told me the pigeons there

  Were flying rats, balloons of vermin.

  But what I recall most about them

  Was the sun flaring a purple fire

  Around the neck of my mate’s homing bird,

  Iridescent feathers signed to a glow,

  Like the brocade on my mother’s party dress,

  As if the bird had swallowed an ember.

  I recall finches coloured like confetti,

  A palette of kingfishers dappling

  The dam near my uncle’s orchard,

  Silver-eyes plundering our loquat tree,

  Gargling the fruit’s delicate nectar.

  Or perhaps the initial bird I saw

  Was that cinnamon harrier crucified

  On a barbed fence in the wheatbelt.

  Its splayed form haunted my entire holiday.

  But possibly, the very first one

  Was the mynah chick I found

  While harvesting peaches in Monbulk,

  A fragile windfall panting at the sun.

  It was covered with soft amber quills,

  Its eyes like two small wells of sky,

  Wings tiny boomerangs of gristle,

  Matted with a smooth flecked down.

  Its tiny body shivered, expectant

  With its own enormous existence.

  I knew it would die, but climbed the tree,

  The fledgling trembling near my heart,

  And placed it in a nest, thinking

  As only a child could, that perhaps

  It would be better if the bird was some way

  Towards the sky and the moonlight,

  A navigable pattern of stars,

 

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