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The Fremantle Press Anthology of Western Australian Poetry

Page 23

by John Kinsella


  were visiting their clan village, where

  they found out that his father had for decades

  been funding the local schools and were treated

  like celebrities, they realized the ghost son-in-law’s

  village was near. His mother declared:

  ‘We must visit our relatives.’

  ~

  Not a village: high-rises over smoke

  and rubble, like Tang Dynasty mountains!

  ~

  His mother rheumatoid, pained, looked up

  at the five flights of stairs between her and family.

  He asked her if that might be too much.

  ‘No. We must pay our respects.’

  Then began her ascent in his arms,

  her own, toughly sensitive, encircling his neck,

  the two of them, frail mother and devoted son,

  lightened, almost pushed up the stairs

  by ghostly hands.

  Fire Imagined

  Past fire is present in thick grasstrees

  chaotic with naturalism, prehistoric growth.

  Someone said it’s more intense in mind than

  out there: towns divide the emptiness into distance,

  graveyards beat the glare between shards of

  flowerpot, weed and headstones that are bottled

  heat.

  It’s like when last year my mother saw

  an angel in the clouds.

  Being realistic I told her in this heat it’d

  melt before hitting the ground.

  The Frog-Memory

  The frogs’ name and sound, pobble-bonk,

  is enough to return me to those first nights of the rainy season

  when a small cloud would gather

  over the six-foot pond behind a friend’s house

  and the unseen frogs would begin their lingua aquatica

  as though erratically thrumming lacky bands,

  as though that sound — ponk-pobble-bonk — were the name

  they’d call themselves.

  Contemplating a Migraine

  Words, there are for this, but the thing — a distant flaring

  under the crust of my skin, deep inside its shifting homeliness.

  Pain: the purest life. I could start to pray …

  Through the window, as compensation, the rain gently gives me the garden,

  its mossy rocks, its green benevolence, the garden that drops away

  Into the soaring cedar forest suggestive of the opposite of whatever

  this pain is.

  I would say, a kind of mountain.

  But maybe I am the mountain,

  and the pain, hidden in cloud, is a foreboding shrine, unvisited.

  Emma Rooksby (b.1972)

  Garbage

  The whir of dawn sprinklers is drowned

  by the song of the garbo, as he stubs the knob

  that lifts the Otto bins. They displace their loads,

  then clatter down, lids flailing, lie postulant

  beside the road. Garbage sacks split and crack;

  household flows mingle indiscriminate

  in the dark tank. The truck starts, stops,

  on erratic communion through the streets.

  All this seems automatic, once the rates

  are paid. ‘The Lord giveth.’ You thank

  nobody, it being a matter of entitlement

  that the fat black bags should accumulate,

  be transported, suppurate in the sun,

  burst on distant afternoons.

  Miriam Wei Wei Lo (b.1973)

  Don’t Call Me Grandma

  ‘Don’t call me Grandma

  when I’m in here

  call me old witch Eva’ —

  that always stopped us

  on the threshold,

  words whistling out into breath,

  we’d watch

  a moment longer,

  she’d move

  between lumps of clay,

  a half-formed pot on a wheel,

  hair catching light

  through a dusty window —

  ‘Grandma,’

  we’d say,

  ‘Don’t call me Grandma

  when I’m in here!’

  ‘Old witch Eva,

  can I come in?

  Can I make something too?’

  Magic words,

  we’d pass that magic line

  where house crossed into shed

  and grandmas into witches.

  Pressing our own cold lumps of clay

  into clumsy teapots and lopsided animals,

  we’d watch her shift

  across the room, her woolly hair

  bunned up or streaming down,

  a sudden glance, a little stare,

  she still looked like Grandma

  but you couldn’t be sure —

  Was that a broomstick in the corner?

  An owl perched on her chair?

  She’d whisk around and lift her arms

  to make us shriek,

  then settle to her work —

  the rhythmic squeak

  of a potter’s wheel,

  the whisper of slurry

  on hands throwing clay

  and behind her back,

  the night-bird, startled from sleep

  stretches up on its chair

  and begins to beat its wings.

  Bumboat Cruise on the Singapore River

  Rhetoric is what keeps this island afloat.

  Singaporean voice with a strong American accent,

  barely audible above the drone of the bumboat engine:

  ‘Singaporeans are crazy about their food.

  They are especially fond of all-you-can-eat buffets.

  Why not do as the locals do and try out one of the buffets

  at these hotels along the waterfront.’ The Swissotel looms.

  The Grand Copthorne. The Miramar. All glass

  and upward-sweeping architecture. Why not do

  as the locals do. Here in this city where conspicuous consumption

  is an artform. Where white tourists wearing slippers and singlets

  are tolerated in black-tie establishments. Dollars. Sense.

  How did I ever live in this place? Sixteen years of my life

  afloat in this sea of contradictions, of which I was, equally, one:

  half-white, half-Chinese; the taxi-driver cannot decide

  if I am a tourist or a local, so he pitches at my husband:

  ‘Everything in Singapore is changing all the time.’

  Strong gestures. Manic conviction. ‘This is good.

  We are never bored. Sometimes my customers

  ask me to take them to a destination, but it is no longer there.’

  We tighten our grip on two squirming children and pray

  that the bumboat tour will exist. Nothing short of a miracle

  this small wooden boat which is taking us now past Boat Quay,

  in its current incarnation, past the Fullerton Hotel

  to the mouth of the Singapore river, where the Merlion

  still astonishes: grotesque and beautiful as a gargoyle.

  The children begin to chafe at confinement. My daughter wails

  above the drone of the engine. There’s talk of closing the mouth

  of the river. New water supply. There’s talk of a casino.

  Heated debate in the Cabinet. Old Lee and Young Lee

  locked in some Oedipal battle. The swell is bigger out here

  in the harbour, slapping up spray against the sides of the boat,

  as if it were waves that kept it afloat, this boat,

  this island, caught between sinking and swimming,

  as I am caught now. As if rhetoric mattered.

  As if this place gives me a name for myself.

  Claire Potter (b.1975)

  The Appeal of Cranes

  wing opportunity

  to see impressed in a wall

&nbs
p; held in special —

  priests severed wing shape marriage

  but which a couple

  dancing in frieze facing winter

  tempting monogamy appropriate a wedding

  a ritual connected to costume destroyed

  (one wing, one cattle horn deposition of materials

  origins ancestry Division, of birds

  Toby Davidson (b.1977)

  H2

  Home is, then the heart is.

  Home is a poem halved.

  Home is making peace

  where the ocean

  killed a man with a shark.

  Peace is shadows listing

  on a grassy path.

  Paths are wet feet welding

  home to heel at last.

  Press kiss, home is

  torn love, birthmarked.

  Scott-Patrick Mitchell (b.1977)

  him

  for tim

  out farther, stars are the

  art in heaven. hollow be the

  sky that does not contain

  them. hello be the aim of

  an introduction. thine

  winged one, my heart is

  undone. you are worth every

  penny from above. give in

  & say let us go to bed

  , for we need to undress

  , for we need to undress

  & press us against us

  . it will lead to temptation

  , which will quiver an

  upheaval. for i am

  your winged one

  & our love will flower

  song in the face of the

  eternal. forever

  endeavour to be a

  lover, a partner, a boy

  , a man

  .

  Eight Letters To A Lover, II

  4 a.m., Port Augusta Train Station

  we have warped the stars

  with technology

  , electricity

  pinned them with wishes

  so they hang pregnant & low

  . we now know

  that satellites & planets

  move among those suns

  — our gods & goddesses

  who hid in constellations

  remain an astrologer’s game

  of connect-the-dots

  . listen

  , the Universe’s

  saucepan

  was left unattended

  . it churned heat

  & bubbled

  spilt

  vapour

  which pinpricked & hardened

  . from this act

  of neglected cooking

  the stars were spat out

  over the darkness

  . there

  my lover

  i have written

  a myth for you

  — made the stars

  looser

  to navigate through

  .

  Jeremy Balius (b.1979)

  Day 6

  This flotilla appanage

  short shrifts my confession; & after

  such accentus, what forgiveness? The reader

  trembles, Charlie trembles, you tremble — until

  raft-bound adrift you don’t know is about is.

  What’s anything about? Anything’s not about.

  Is what it is:

  remembering bare in Canossian shame hearing ‘we’ll

  let ya back in, but it’ll cost ya’; & so I got weary of try-

  ing to be my friends. & the mind no longer

  has will to resist & the will to live consumes

  a wretched man on a wretched raft

  on a wretched sea. & so Augie died

  so Charlie could live. I can’t do it.

  It can’t be done. I can’t do it. It can’t

  be done. I can’t do it. It can’t be fated.

  I can’t do it. It can be done. Codetta:

  & I etched

  into the rail Charlie was

  here & I weren’t

  impressed. May be dying &

  surviving say the same thing; & -but at least

  nobody’s solemnly swearing ‘I loved Ricardo Villalobos

  till that album’ while referencing mix-

  tapes of every great song

  ever. May there be mercy on my soul.

  Forgive me, Alcy, forgive me, everyone.

  Necessity knows no rules

  Coda: for I whose eyes discern a revolt

  of repulsion; plaudite!

  Shevaun Cooley (b.1979)

  let down at birth into the dark well and overflowing with it

  Wednesday’s Child

  is that what you think

  poet, what do they mean full of

  woe, are we receptacles always

  learning the best way

  to contain

  Celan never quite said keep yes

  and no unspilt, dark wells we,

  with answers cupped

  in the palms, so full

  they fall through

  our fingers

  once we’d have said over

  the last sheaf, Wodan

  gallops across:

  the harvest done,

  Wednesday’s god rode

  his white horse

  through stubble,

  collecting the cut

  souls, driving them

  out

  clearing

  the shed, my father

  found a rusted scythe,

  perfectly crafted, it was

  possible just in the holding

  to imagine the motion

  it asked for, its use locked

  into its form, the un-

  splintered grips,

  the curve of the snath

  I stood on the already-

  mowed grass and reaped

  the air, cut swaths

  you’d never see,

  the light suddenly clear

  as if an old cry

  whyed tautly

  across the low hills

  and west to the sea

  J.P. Quinton (b.1981)

  Little River

  Windows reveal the soft stopping

  Hush of the little river below,

  Little eyes poking out,

  There’s no symbolism

  In little eyes of the little river.

  Blind like a family jumping

  Out of windows

  The little river’s bends

  Hang from the bough.

  It’s so heavy

  No rock will ever

  Skip across the surface

  Indignant like an ocean

  No stone will ever sink to the bottom.

  Keep at an appropriate distance!

  Little river will destroy you

  It will make your fears succulent.

  We will try to prevent

  The little river from hushing you

  Through the twilight

  Through the broken glass

  On the pavement under our shoe.

  It will be of no use

  The little river will stay hushed

  And keep bubbling like a soda,

  Its waters will rip.

  But I am pessimistic,

  It is no use.

  I cannot fathom its depths

  Or judge whether it is good or bad

  Chipping away at its shores

  The banks will spread water

  To where we stand.

  We will embrace

  It like a sponge

  Lapping at its greatest ascent

  Our second body clean and soft.

  What effect will little river’s

  Encroaching waters descend upon us?

  Us non-believers

  Us realists who discredit

  Its sparkling leaves

  Resenting the sharp sky screen.

  Because of each other’s thoughts

  We lapse to think less of you, little river.

  Still, you remain
still

  And quiet, in the stillness of unrest.

  Ode to C.Y. O’Connor

  We know you topped yourself, Charlie Boy, but the dead

  Are alive and the living dead, have a cigarette instead.

  Been following your pipe for a few days, from Grass Valley

  To Doodlakine, Burracoppin to Bodallin, been thinking of you

  And what your life might have been, but maybe failure

  Was your motive, maybe you knew the pipe would work

  An entire town built on falsehood:

  ‘Good Country for Hardy People’ the district motto.

  Today I pulled into a camp just outside Carrabin,

  A man wearing his wife beater on the outside, starting a fire.

  Are you allowed to camp here? Dunno, I am.

  Is there any water around? He shrugged his shoulder

  Swivelled, Not that I’ve seen. Your two silver pipes

  Were behind him, but there would be no friendship between us.

  Caitlin Maling (b.1985)

  The Break

  To prevent tragedy the brush must be cut at angles,

  no less than ten metres between squares.

  Here my ancestors planted the buffalo grass

  where it burns too hot for the native plants to seed

  and we need these squares between land

  to stop it sparking all the ways to our homes.

  After her third institutionalisation they suggested

  that my aunt’s cingulate cortex be severed,

  there was too much leaping between lobes.

  Now I am the oldest member of my father’s family

  not to have undergone inpatient treatment

  for whatever fire caused my grandmother’s suicide

  and the beating my grandfather gave which sparked it.

  I try to hold my line. To be the space

  large enough to let it all burn out.

  But out of my native climate I arc and arc.

  Corey Wakeling (1985)

  Lingo Surprise

  Lingo as a last keen sanctuary for the purpose come

  to the circle who saw philosophy and then turned back.

  The coral and the woods, and the ankle blisters from biting,

  were better, so went apace. Then of course

  you think of his Fremantle and the aeronautics stories,

  his confidence, your pauper’s dreams of sailing, a generally

  spare reference to an abstract agriculture.

  Better the excitement became devotion in the Darling Ranges,

 

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