Hills Hoist Poems

Posted on February 1, 2018 by Andrew Burke

Lance Hill returned to Adelaide from the war in 1945 to find his fruit trees competing for space with the family clothes line. In his laundry workshop, Hill set about creating a rotary clothes hoist for his family that would later develop into that symbol of Australian suburbia, the Hills Hoist.

1

magpie walks in his jaunty manner
under washing and cocks his head
listening to Billie Holiday
stands still a moment as
a phrase catches his attention
and the breeze flaps
behind the beat

2

Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.
– Archimedes.

3

when it comes to pegs, I admire
the craftsmanship of the wooden ones,
now weathered grey among
bright coloured plastics.

I asked an inventor
what great force held up
our sheets, underpants,
socks, shirts and bras …

he told me the great power
of the small torsion spring
was made of music wire!
piano wire! Amazing.

3

predawn birds’ chitter-chatter
dew on my bare feet as
I hug the Hills Hoist and weep
for the state of the world.

4

A Darwin family reported
that the only thing left
standing after Cyclone Tracy
was their Hills Hoist
(Wikepedia)






5

little white tufts
like old Chinese philosopher’s hair
wave above the Hills Hoist.

a small honey eater has
pecked at the fabric bound wires
to gain nest linings.

I wish him well
and smooth down
the backyard wisdom.

Posted in 84: SUBURBIA | Tagged

Traffic Calming

Posted on February 1, 2018 by Bernard Cohen

He pulls out to the wrong
side that morning, doubleparked
trucks tense him up
so dangerous, meat-hooked
carcasses, latched-open doors,
chilled pink in him more
than risk gritted in his teeth as
he overtakes, still he
drives heavily,
wrestles left, tyres abandon
pneumatics, grinds around
a corner too close, struggles
through the forty zone past
the high school – aren’t we all
exhausted
and over-heated
teenagers wishing
to do nothing while the world
misjudges?
We ruin our way
along the streets, how much space we take to which we are not entitled, with paper
and gum and all that language falling off us as we go
outside the bakery,
another van unfolds, trays of wheat
and yeast and bicarb and salt
cooked up around lower grades of fruit
asphalt and diesel, next hazard
for through-traffic which is him
with his down- turned mouth and flexed
lips and urge to cry, inexplicable.
If only something would explode or
tear itself to pieces or if he could,
he’s too meticulous to do other
than drive.
He recomposes,

intrusions built into little coddled streets
shaking the car this way, that, build character,
someone in council must’ve watched a lot
of stretched-metal cartoons. His car so fragile
as to scratch up
under
falling
leaves.
Trucks everywhere, nowhere
safe enough, carparks
too small for anyone.
How has it come to uncountable boxes back and forth along the highways,
this to there and that to here, so many lives taken with windscreens and squinting
and noise, he winds down the window where he
shouldn’t among the petrol stations where
fumes hurl and swirl like discount vouchers
If only he could glitch out of here for enough time
to inhale some other place before driving onwards.

Posted in 84: SUBURBIA | Tagged

Wembley Food Court

Posted on February 1, 2018 by Robert Wood

Intent on wonton destruction
we fought streets
combatted mortality
thieved grandness from auto-tuned oysters.

They sung out our numbers
saucy asked
and the sambal yams awaited deliverance.

We forgot the steam
shucked corn the color of lions
drank nettle tea
with wag-tongues red as the flags of false masters.

Posted in 84: SUBURBIA | Tagged

The Sound of Spitting

Posted on February 1, 2018 by Jake Goetz

it rises in school yards

of smashed-fruit afternoons
sun peeling back day’s dazed
in Shakespeare
and Pythagoras’s theorem
when two kids use sticks
to cast spells on each other’s shins
smelling the scent of piss
from some suburban Harry Potter’s

mid-week binge, brain battering
beneath the train bridge
a trolley rattling
in the Kmart Christmas extravaganza
or a battler pulling his last cone
and melting into re-runs of The Simpsons
i’m talking layman’s terms
the sound of spitting
how it is to be out here all free

amidst the BP fluorescent green
considering the sun as a razorblade

cutting through thin crust

as we sit at the water’s edge
and watch as we roll
like lorikeets opening locks
with their beaks

and leaving us as digital brumbies
to be rode through a golden soil sunset

and isn’t that just the way it is

English riding train carriages into obscurity

only to get lost in that giant apricot
sitting on the lawn
or if that is just it, to wonder
as an Illawarra train sings
the Average Joe electric

breaking the windows
of the most religiously
worshipped Westfield

Posted in 84: SUBURBIA | Tagged

I Want to Look Like the Girls in the Mail Order Catalogue

Posted on February 1, 2018 by Kathryn Hummel

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Posted in 84: SUBURBIA | Tagged

Willesden Nocturne for a Retired Nurse

Posted on February 1, 2018 by Julie Maclean

When you open your midnight door

fishing for sound you hear

the scrape of a snail

the frame fills with the head of a fox

your eyes meet

Do you then plant a stethoscope

on the throat

 of a wren

feel for the pulse of the glacier

 grinding its way to the future

 or track the thrum
of a lone motorbike rider under colliding stars

scanning lit streets

 in the hope of sighting injured mammals
deep in open-cut screens drowning in tea

blinded by the glare

of the jewellery channel?

Posted in 84: SUBURBIA | Tagged

Plath Close

Posted on February 1, 2018 by Simon Hall

There are Tennysons everywhere but only one street in Melbourne is named after Sylvia – Plath Close in Delahey, 13 F 6 – a cul-de-sac above Blake Close and Slessor Drive, below Raine Court, east of Yeats Drive (Tennyson Drive curves further south). A little north run a few Olympic gold medallist slash celebrity athlete streets – Hackett Court, Perkins Close, Currie Drive. West is a row of crops and southwest a pocket of stones. In Feb 2014 a Google Maps van camera drove by Plath Close capturing empty nature strips, cement footpaths, low or no fences, concrete driveways and browning lawns, closed gates, blinds drawn against heat or spies, and conifers, conifers – dwarf, pencil, cedar – pitched-roof white letterboxes perched on white poles, a freshly planted low-maintenance garden of rock mulch and astroturf and, from the close’s corner, the spire of a ‘215m high’ aerial. Delahey is off the Calder not far from the Bob Jane raceway where Gunners once played – the nearest stations are Watergardens or Keilor Plains. One day I will take my bicycle on a train to visit Plath Close.

Posted in 84: SUBURBIA | Tagged

His Murder in Four Movements

Posted on February 1, 2018 by Eleanor Malbon

movement i

teen bodies on warm bitumen
legs in shorts in the sun drenched quad
she was my wild one, my brightly burning cloud

together driving fast through pine plantations
creeping into the burnt out observatory
gazing through the glassless dome at the stars
a universe that can’t look any closer
burning through our eyes

testing ourselves
against a shifting measure of
something I can’t even guess at

the summer we turned seventeen
heat bent our bike spokes
so we stripped down to swim in the lake weed
that bent around each limb

the summer we turned seventeen
we cut down feral pines
ran a Christmas tree racket out of the church car park
until they caught us out
chased us away running
lake weed streaming from our skin

Natalie Wilson and I
growing up rollies
on the edge of a stormwater drain
underage gigs
pop-punk clothing
black t-shirts, ripped jeans

and late one night
a needle, an ink pot
slight resistance and a stick-poke tattoo
three lines hinting the shape of a triangle

she never said what it meant
just that it reminded her of things


movement ii

news headline
Man found dead had multiple stab wounds

when I saw his photo
my pulse moved to my ears
I knew him without reading his name
they chose a shot from high school

light skin and freckles
thin red hairs

I remember him leaning
over the desk with blunt scissors
scraping back curls of wood
his fists in the mosh pit
black t-shirts, ripped jeans
he was everybody’s last man standing

it’s been a decade
I can’t remember if we said ‘hi’ in all that time

it was evening before I heard
how many times he was stabbed
there’s something visceral about that number, seventeen


movement iii

after the first reports there’s silence
no answers instead
months of waiting, wondering

then Natalie Wilson is arrested

the shock is hard and fast in my chest
my wild one, my brightly burning cloud
the burnt kitchen knife under her house
at first it’s no and then it’s yes

my head goes around and around with it
she’s accused
I think she did it
I have no evidence
she hasn’t been convicted

she’s accused
they found the knife
it couldn’t be her
they’re holding her
she’s going to trial

my memories of her body are
all teenage freshness
all strong tanned legs
lipsmackers
swimming carnivals
impulse deodorant
there’s something visceral about that number, seventeen

I wake into 2am confusion
night images visit me

her body, warm muscles
my memories curled up against her
sleepovers and movie marathons
whispered conversations

her body empathetic to mine
gasping pleasure
lips to cheekbone slip
hands to back bone pressed
hard like winter air

her body with that knife in her hand
four arms, limbs pushed together
the smacking of meat
seventeen times through the chest

and    I’m    fucking    appalled


epilogue: modern ritual

after she’s convicted I don’t visit her
time will not set her free

I run scenarios through my head
late at night like psalms

on Tuesdays I want her punished
embalmed and un-forgiven

by Wednesday all I know is her humanity
I perform sacrament in my mind at these times

I take her body
lay it down upon the kitchen table

wash her arms with warm water
a steaming wet towel

wash her legs, her feet
rub between her toes

brush out her hair
place a silk scarf over her eye sockets

I whisper to her that I trust her
I whisper that I will never forgive her

I lay her humanity down
stark against the kitchen tiles

Posted in 84: SUBURBIA | Tagged

Car Park Crows

Posted on February 1, 2018 by Jeff Guess

Their eyes are steel sequins
fixed with a dark tack
gripping down on soft plastic handles
of deserted supermarket trolleys.

Sitting out of chrome cages
preying on what’s remained
as rubbish, the gun-metal gaze
waits for something to click.

They hold in their stare
a whole expanse of black asphalt
beneath which nothing pulses:
dead earth. They will not shift

for busy shoppers, and know what
ancient rules can now be ignored
or broken. A taming of opposites.
They give no ground. Still rule

the roost. Suddenly wings and flight
to scrappy gum tree branches.
Evening sharpens wind to cold:
all beaks and claws.

Posted in 84: SUBURBIA | Tagged

Icon and Iconoclasm

Posted on February 1, 2018 by Jennifer Maiden

Lachlan Brown called, in an interview with Fiona Wright, a quote from
my essay The Suburban Problem of Evil his favourite one on
the Suburbs: saying I said, “nowhere else can the eternal
and the eternally
reversing dialectic between icon and iconoclasm be so sharply
observed,” or something like that’, and, without my referral
to source (me), that does sound accurate. I live where the lights
from the Mountains, the glittering or fog-lost Glenbrook Gap,
horizon the trees that hide the far Nepean, with a long
foreground of streets where cardboard houses orientally cling
low to the earth like children in between, like children
playing a game in a ring, aeroplaning close again,
shrilly, to the strange familiar earth. My vast veranda
creates ghosts and spirits, asks them until they answer,
but none answer the same, and in their courtly structure
function to contradict themselves and then each other,
providing fruitful conflict for the centre. Moonwild above me,
squealing with summer, the flying foxes in the rubber tree
squabble and fuck and seem to bounce their siblings
up and down the steel roof like gremlins. I am thinking
of Yeats’s ‘The centre will not hold’ and, God, mine hasn’t. I
hope I have more luck with the bowing roof, since my
chair swing is attached to it and shaking. I am at this time
uneasy anyway about the suburbs. The great religion
of overseas travel has descended on them like a filter
with picturesque colours, every concrete curb and corner
a Women’s Weekly World Discovery for Fine Writing. I do not
know how far this penetrates the core: long insurrection.What
I wrote tested innocence, violence, and they crucibled together
in perpetual furtive catalysts as rhythmic as this weather,
as unprepared. The suburbs are never plainly seen. Their reverence
– the icon –
only ornaments their experience. They change ornaments
like holy diction but to distance from their dead:
iconoclasm.
The sky is bled.
This grey roof holds alone.The moon becomes the sun.
Reversing magnets, to their caves, the river’s bed,
the flying fox spin home. __________________________

Posted in 84: SUBURBIA | Tagged

The Summer that Fires Raged

Posted on February 1, 2018 by Kristian Patruno

for the Artist of Artists

Leonard Cohen played,
the great poet played, touring
as I first gave myself to you
in a pour of valentines rain
where the hipster suburb we washed through
bloomed roses
Spraypainted along the bricks of
white walls amidst
traffic and the smoking news
of burning Victorian forests
that we threw a gig for
all the mohawk tattooed
dreadlocked bands
to charity the fire / victims
with no summer air con
at our makeshift bar whereat
a $5 raffle ticket got you a ‘free’
beer / circumvented the Liquor-Law
Act. that cooled subtropic night
like your negligee slipping off
post-gig in the queensized bed
-room of your all girl
permaculture sharehouse
whose bamboo garden pipes
watered banana groves where the chickens
took flight from nextdoor’s coop of
a black African-marimba-playing couple
who split like unbraided hair
when husband supped from a garden
of papaya-slice smiles, which
dripped from groupie chicks before him
for years till he tasted; as we Hallelujahed!
Cohen songs, half our Boheme friends
grabbed tickets for, while the rest graphed
alien murals through squats they’d long kicked the walls from
like leather jacketed turkeys
scratching up some nest
before studios bought their eggs
and toured them up highways
much shorter than Cohen’s
(that artist of artists)
who donated all from his gigs
to bushfires / as we
struck a match—
called
us

Posted in 84: SUBURBIA | Tagged

Somewhere in the Suburbs

Posted on February 1, 2018 by Christine Howe

for Lachlan Berry and Emily Crocker

Somewhere in the suburbs a tongue shapes caper-tasting words. Somewhere in the suburbs a tongue kicks consonants like a soccer ball. Somewhere in the suburbs a tongue lifts a sentence like a barbell: a test of lexical strength. Somewhere in the suburbs a tongue tastes syllables like a patisserie chef. Somewhere in the suburbs a tongue launches a poem of sparkling wine, contained in a glass backlit by the glow of a Liquorland sign, and the poem arcs up and hurtles towards the head of a woman emerging from glass auto-doors, who is so startled by the terrible beauty of words caught in glass caught in neon light that she lets her bag slip from manicured fingers and the poem caught in glass smashes into the doors made of glass and glass shatters and prawns fly out of the bag because the poem has ripped ten thousand shreds in the plastic. The poem hasn’t saved the prawns, but all those shards of syllables and broken words shine bright as the sun on the bitumen, eclipsing the Liquorland glow.

Posted in 84: SUBURBIA | Tagged

Icaria

Posted on February 1, 2018 by Isi Unikowski

As always, time’s sieve selects a myth from the facts,
the way the city—a pith spilled from the karst—
is pushed pack into the yellow haze
despite the ships’ urgency to its quayside

as if to leave room for the farmer cutting terraces
from the bay’s blue potential,
a shepherd checking for rain: all of parish life and industry
flowing up and to the left against the frame.

Over there, the local rag’s society hack
focuses on a celebrity shaking hands,
coaxing a raffle with a megaphone
watchful for someone significant.

A school band, tuned slightly awry as their uniforms
trombone flaring over sausage-smoky booths
between which adolescents fumble, still half drawn
to the dodge-ems; parents wander past the jams and doilies,

past the obeisant lavender, for the third time,
encyclopaedias and best-sellers parked like veterans
in the sun, brochures on weed control
blown to the perimeter. A recruiter hands out air force caps.

A group of young men tests their harness,
anxious to be off; kit creaks and chafes
against the pulpy air; momentarily they feel
their silly age, ostentatiously check the gauges.

One falls from the sky; the others pass from our art
as from our sight, old men in leather jackets chatting,
barely interrupted by the squadron’s shadow
passing over the oval.

Posted in 84: SUBURBIA | Tagged

itchy

Posted on February 1, 2018 by Margaret Owen Ruckert

a friend moves between carriages and sits down beside me. we start talking. worst night in years. rain smashing on bleary windows. I remember. stormy nights in a crazy fibro. how as a child I’d run between rooms. carrying rags to help my parents. weeping windows require thick tissues. cause and effect. never thought about the window ritual until tonight. a bedroom reeking of stale walls. sweating rags. this was the norm. damp child staring out a crystal-spotted window at the wilderness beyond. with only my parents for protection. they tried to get the keys to their fibro dream. had a mortgage. but the builder defaulted. not till my early thirties was I aware. their embarrassment of windows. no lead flashing. only my curiosity brought out the truth. Where was I born? my ribbons of trust entangling as they talked. my parents too house proud to admit. they were duped. my friend listens. yawns. nods in silence. friendships are built on the puddle of a life such as mine. his. he says good-bye. before the climax. my parents engage a Queens Counsel to obtain an access order. I was almost due. they are desperate. too late. the builder has walked. told they are lucky to have a house. many live in garages. open an envelope with a legal letterhead. another invoice. smash a window to gain entrance. void insurance. I always wondered why money was tight as a 1950s girdle. steam off the station in a nylon frock stitched by grand-mother. hand-knitted woollen socks. itchy for revenge on home wreckers who walk out on clients. ride ends. I avenge the memory and buy a scratchie.

Posted in 84: SUBURBIA | Tagged

Plasticland

Posted on February 1, 2018 by Mike Ladd

At the edge of the caryard
the bunting in
cloudless
air

framed by two poles
triangular flags
clap in the
wind

lift,
flutter,
clap again:

petro-chemical colours
the retina
loves

the shape, feel and
hue of our
times

styrofoam grains
in our salt and
blood

Hard pebbles of plastic
churn in the guts
of seabirds

a million waves
from
here.

Posted in 84: SUBURBIA | Tagged

Heading Out

Posted on February 1, 2018 by Ainsley Allen

Don’t worry, Icarus, things are getting heavy
down here too. The minotaurs have fashion
sense, crash our parties, argue with the umpire.

So we’re heading out for good tonight,
spinning hot wax all the way to Mars,
to where the first suburban labyrinth

is designed to descend instead. I hear New Crete
is a city architected like a fist — burrows deep
or punches up (depending on your point of

view), the outer knuckles splitting reddened skin,
bleeding into the dust.
Here it makes sense

to aim lower, go beneath the belt: drink your hubris
rather than be drowned; wear it properly this time,
like a dark dinner jacket.

You’ll want for nothing, but you’ll never soar again.

Posted in 84: SUBURBIA | Tagged

Suburban Deer

Posted on February 1, 2018 by Amanda Anastasi

Deer Park in Melbourne’s outer west, 1990

Mediterranean columns against brown brick. Kids squabble
about whose turn it is to hide in their game. Careful gardens.

Pebbled strips. A terracotta-skinned girl carrying colour
pencils in a Barbie case, skipping past the cream, closed

lids of roller shutters. Low powerlines. A disruption
of gumtrees. The slanted, round scribbles of thirteen-

year-old romance on the bus stop. A cross atop plain brick,
interrupted by stained glass. An unspoken grudge. A lined,

slow-moving lady in black clutches her Sunday missal
and envelope of coins, a whiff of provolone and bleach

on her fingers. Neat, creased shoes. Broken glass. Holding
a rosary, a parishioner spits on the steps. Old men gather

like seagulls at the shopping centre bench, avoiding their wives’
gossip and wiped-down kitchens. They talk of the rising price

of fruit and the replacement of the parish priest. A measured
greeting at the crossing. Flowers tied to a pole. Twitchy kids

leave their marks using souped up cars like paint brushes,
in the earliest part of the morning when the roads are clear.

Posted in 84: SUBURBIA | Tagged

Enough

Posted on February 1, 2018 by Ouyang Yu

in Austr alia
people r af,raid
of not making enough money

in Austr alia
people r af,raid
of not being correct enough

in Austr alia
people r af,raid
of not being good enough

in Austr alia
people r af,raid
of not being judged enough

in Austr alia
people r af,raid
of not winning enough awards

in Austr alia
people r af,raid
of liking others enough

in Austr alia
people r af,raid
of not writing about the past enough

in Austr alia
people r af,raid
of not being white enough

in Austr alia
people r af,raid
very, very af.raid

Posted in 84: SUBURBIA | Tagged

the anarchists of hyde park (and my dad)

Posted on February 1, 2018 by Vidya Rajan

there’s a bee sting that draws dave’s palm
back he waves it out there in the open air and then
sucks on the puff of jelly skin though you know that’s
not gonna help dave is
burly big his beard’s big
it’s a nest a nettle a smoked out mass
of comfort wood whisky oak and i
put my whole head in it when i was ten
big pat on the back big dave
now let’s get back
to the literature revolution

dad dad revolution dad
wasn’t always so tatty but
it wasn’t a woman mum
that made him come undone
it was just the passing of life yeah
just the waking up finally
just the finally seeing
he smelt
of sweat and skin but when
it’s your own blood it smells sweet
smells like heat like summer like here
they come again these men
and one of them’s holding court
always hoping hoping
for a change for anything
don’t blame the wrong thing
something’s changing that’s for sure i’m sixteen

put on a tie
just to see them start
they’re too far gone
it’s the first-class stuff from mark
from his own
grown in his own back yard before the pigs got it
put my lips
thin pink twigs on suzie’s
twenty years older than me to the day
she doesn’t even laugh
guess i have an irish tongue
i’ve swallowed the pamphlets whole
and suzie’s dad was chilean
or so the rumour goes so
she’s really real she knows her stuff she’s conscious
we never speak again

i was moon-like then i was
pale and waiting
sat in the shade reading
they sat in the sun in the grass in the middle of the park
someone’s got a guitar nick
cave nick cave nick cave nick save
us tufts of belly hair blooming out of shirts
these old men these pink and shiny sacks going way back when
getting closer every day
to the sum to the truth to every one
not coming undone
i take off at a run
i circle the path i pant
no one comes after me
i rake the bulbs and yell
look at this fuckin fuckin
look at this country
a pause

applause from the enclave
applause for the son
finally
a benediction howling his young lungs out
dad glows they’re my
friends they’re my friends in arms for life
and another thing sorry
the house is on wheels tonight

a roach steals into
the hollowed out shell of a snail
i lower my head to the floor
fresh grass outside
the door
there’s hope tonight
if i set this place on fire
there’s truth

Posted in 84: SUBURBIA | Tagged

Night

Posted on February 1, 2018 by Shane Strange

Youth are firing off
in the park. Dark laughter over
the sound of cars on the
arterial. Wave forms.

We lie in undress,
hot, meaty, wondering
if we will sleep. Our thoughts away
in youth maybe.

Or in roadsides. Or in gamey others who traced
our bodies back then, when we didn’t know

each other. When we didn’t think it would end
up like this.
Not like this at all.

Posted in 84: SUBURBIA | Tagged

Banksia Integrifolia

Posted on February 1, 2018 by Anne Elvey

Stencilled and still
coast banksias—ubiquitous
in your suburb—

are ogrish
in their sculpting.
With no impulse

toward symmetry
they undermine
your streetscape.

Where the asymmetry
of gums is elegant
on the whole, a banksia

bristles.
It will not say
consider yourself at home

Posted in 84: SUBURBIA | Tagged

birak

Posted on February 1, 2018 by Scott-Patrick Mitchell

from over the scarp, fire wind barks: hot
is the lot given to us who live in Perth. UV

so white it’s like invasion all over again. climate
change an explanation that pollies deny, a vain

blame game, but proof is there in how roads turn
to liquid asphalt, trees break off branches to fetch,

begin whistling for dogs. a firestorm rumbles in
the scrub & bush we have as ornamentals around

metropolitan hub. still the temperature climbs &
coals city in burning hold. release folds when the

Indian Ocean coils sol into horizon: until then, we
sweat a wet earnt from perspiration, expect snow

to fall from the flame fission & floral combustion.

Posted in 84: SUBURBIA | Tagged

Household Ripening

Posted on February 1, 2018 by Tess Pearson

I refuse to do the vacuuming when you are out, my dear
even though it is infinitely quicker without a toddler.
Though there is a kind of satisfaction in making things clean,
such tasks are never complete, but cyclical and ever renewing.

Even though it is infinitely quicker without a toddler
I prefer to go the long way around, see the twist and meander.
Such tasks are never complete, but cyclical and ever renewing
dust gathers on the sill, mould blooms in the vegetable drawer.

I prefer to go the long way around, see the twist and meander,
we do the dance of avoidance, weaving untouched bodies.
Dust gathers on the sill, mould blooms in the vegetable drawer
presence builds thick in places, how ancient sheep paths wear threadbare.

We do the dance of avoidance, weaving untouched bodies.
Because I refuse to waste one single drop of silence
presence builds thick in places, how ancient sheep paths wear threadbare
because there is a certain ripening in grime and un-showered bodies.

Because I refuse to waste one single drop of silence
Your midnight waking will never find me washing dishes
Because there is a certain ripening in grime and un-showered bodies
I refuse to do the vacuuming when you are out, my dear.

Posted in 84: SUBURBIA | Tagged

Depression

Posted on February 1, 2018 by Carl Boon

So we thought through the getting-

worse time of blackbirds & the voices
of our parents. The uncovered,
unadorned kitchen table shivered

more gently; the trains, it seemed,

had slowed. Father stopped brushing

the mud from his shoes when he left

in the morning, moving forth
into the nowhere-gray. Most nights

he returned with a newspaper
& a beard. Sometimes he didn’t return

at all & we didn’t ask why. Mother
clutched her rosary beads & filled

our bowls halfway with soup, insisting

always we scrub our skin well

but the powdery soap burned, dismayed

us. I concealed peanuts & raisins
in the spine of my geometry book,

hungry before lunchtime.
Sundays were the worst, homilies

on patience & frugality, how they suffered

in the desert with nothing inside them

but words. Communion meant
dark comedy: not enough bread,

not enough wine. Father despised

the priest when he drank up
what we had not. In April 1933
I tore the backyard rose bush up

& planted apple seeds there, dreaming

of pie with cinnamon & milk. In May
—
impatient—I ate the fledgling sprouts

myself, chewing them slowly. How bitter,

how it was not quite to be a man.

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