A Cramped Garden

Posted on August 1, 2015 by Joe McLaren

You vines cling too tight
to the brown brick shed.
He has no room to move
with the car pressed up against him like that.

And the rest of you trees
and birds and the roaring traffic,
there is no space here
you are all too alive.

Posted in 69: TRANSTASMAN | Tagged

Forgetting

Posted on August 1, 2015 by Bryan Walpert

A small remark, almost unnoticed,
then not quite believed, like those false
pools the late afternoon heat makes

on the road you (for there is, it turns
out, a you here, and a setting, let’s
make it sun) are driving into dusk

time-wise, albeit away from dusk
geographically, moving east from
the mountain, trying to keep to the tip

of the peak’s shadow, which in a more
fanciful mood you might regard
as a hand reaching out for you,

though not the kind of personification
you particularly like in a poem,
not this late in the game. At any rate,

this remark, when it slipped into
existence, when she gave birth
to it there between you, held itself aloft

in your thoughts, like a moon
risen in the sky of your mind and which
you saw as though you’d never seen

it rise before. It seemed incongruous
among the other thoughts—the ones
about you, the ones in her head, that is,

the ones you’d invented about you
for her head—incongruous like an old couch,
beer-brown with a permanent ditch

carved into the far left cushion, amid
the matching soft-light white of the others,
the kind of couch a new husband naively sees

as inviting and friendly and so insists
at first on keeping in a place of prominence,
or rather he keeps insisting, but fails

and then it’s down to the cellar
to sleep the sleep of the past. (A bit
of a stereotype, which though unfair

is familiar enough that we might
meet on common ground, you and I.)
Anyway, just before she made

this remark, you had been so taken
with her—that is, taken with
her notions of you or, rather, taken

with your notion of her notions
of you—that it did not seem out
of the question that someday you

might give up the old couch, let it
sink a level in the house, a house you
might one day paint together,

an off-white to cover up the lives lived
there before you; you could see that
she was the kind to get a smudge

of paint there off-center on her chin,
which you imagined you might be called
on to remove, but then her remark slapped you

into the present, which itself now thankfully
is safely becoming the past, falling mile
after mile into the shadow catching up

with you, a shadow that now seems less like
a hand and more like memory itself (again,
though, not a comparison you’d normally find

fetching). For it was the kind of remark
not worth recalling or believing,
better left in the dim basement

of memory, beneath the old paint blanket,
the splatter-guard that covers so many
offenses, the botched junior prom date

with Marlie, the stumbling admission
of virginity (yours, I fear—I’m starting
to feel sorry for you), the whole summer

camp underwear incident—but why dredge
it all up, the stiff blanket of embarrassment
covers these offenses, the way paint slaps

pesky imperfections from the molding, or
a shadow masks the potholes in the road, or
the earth’s atmosphere gives the dead, airless

moon a kind of friendly, bon vivant
appearance, which is not at all the type
of description you favor in a poem,

not this late, driving to who knows what
metaphor you’re capable of, under cover
of, for Christ’s sake, the second person,

a mirage you’ve never favored because
you drive up and it disappears, as the day
does to dark, which is the convenient,

comfortable blanket beneath which we sleep,
you and I, even while driving, even in daylight,
every damned day of our peaceful lives.

Posted in 69: TRANSTASMAN | Tagged

Future Value

Posted on August 1, 2015 by Alan Feldman

My finance teacher, with a voice like Ghandi’s,
is trying to explain the concept of future value.

He says we’ll like finance, because it’s like time travel.
He says it’s nothing like accounting, which is all about

tallying up the deficits of the past. Finance, he says
is all about the future, and so all of its answers

(he cheerfully tells us) are wrong.
Thousands all over the world, we’re listening

to his lecture, and trying to solve the problems
that cast most of us into an ideal future of singing

the song of future value. The magic mirror of finance.
The telephone booth that takes us far into the future

on the day the final payment is made––then back
to calculating the present value of all those payments

down the sluiceway of time. Calculating
as if the winds of hazard and contingency

can be measured out to many decimal places
for my fellow students, faces glowing

from their screens, gazing at the heaven
we’ve always dreamed of––a heaven of ideas

that create value, the best ones attracting
the capital that is always hungrily searching.

So says the tiny head of my professor
who pauses from his work on formulas to stare at us

backward through the camera––each of us out there,
whether in St. Petersburg or Singapore––to say

that he believes we learn best when we have to struggle;
and that some things are too valuable to measure,

and here he offers love as an example, as if
he’s used to assuming his students are young;

and that the problems on the test will be much, much harder
than anything he’s explaining to us now.

Posted in 69: TRANSTASMAN | Tagged

Notes on the Creation of the World

Posted on August 1, 2015 by Scott Hamilton

(for Visesio Siasau)

On the first night of creation
Hikule’o turned the sea upside down
and shook it out, the way an old lady shakes out her purse
for a bus driver.
The sun fell out of the sea
like small change.

On the first day of creation
Hikule’o drew squares and triangles
with her unstumped hand.
When she was finished
her characters looked at each other,
shrugged shoulders, cracked knuckles,
and shook their almost-perfect forms
into kinks and bulges and blurs.
They walked away, into the world.

On the edge of a clearing
a man and a woman coupled,
doubling their imperfections,
becoming one beast.
The goddess’ harelip moistened with joy.

On the second day
Hikule’o gave the world a will of its own.
Tides muscled the channel
to Fanga’uta lagoon. The whip and the fly-whisk
prepared persecutions.

On the third day the goddess felt suddenly alone
as she walked between plantations.
She turned, and saw her shadow flee
across a field, then disappear into a hedge
where hibiscus eyes waited.

On the fourth day
Hikule’o began her diary.
Her pen worked like a spade,
tunnelling forwards in time
to sons and usurpers.
She read a page aloud
to the future, and mistook the silence
for applause.

On the fifth day
Bishop Berkeley stood in ‘Atenisi’s seminar room
and denied the existence of space and time.
Hikule’o dropped him down a well
one of Maui’s heels had made.
The bishop fell like a lucky coin.

On the sixth day Hikule’o walked through Nuku’alofa
and took a table at Escape Cafe.
Lo’au read the New Zealand Herald aloud to her,
without knowing it was almost a week out of date.
Hikule’o yawned, and dropped the morning moon
into her teacup, then yawned again, and watched the moon dissolve
like a lump of sugar.


Lo’au: Tongan culture-hero who taught navigation and sailed to the end of the world.
‘Atenisi: independent school in Tonga associated with free thought and the pro-democracy movement.

Posted in 69: TRANSTASMAN | Tagged

Hard Bun

Posted on August 1, 2015 by Andrew Weatherly

Soft fur on the hard top
Blood bone fur heart ears
run together
run over
run through
by crows’ peaks
kaffeclatsch
breakfast bun
turned over
As I drive by dodging crows
four wings flop a few feet away
one’s stomach speaking strongly
can’t let go
frantically pulling something stringy
in the soft light a hard beak.

Posted in 69: TRANSTASMAN | Tagged

The Underground Loop

Posted on August 1, 2015 by Lynn Davidson

The train is down. We are waiting at its heaving side
for the fresh train to come. The train that will come.
We grow transparent with the rain we brought down on us.

Out of darkness and into the Southern Cross
where a cantering light adjusts its stride to run alongside us.
The inner place we risked our lives for.

Posted in 69: TRANSTASMAN | Tagged

Seven Visions

Posted on August 1, 2015 by Rachel Bush

i
(lentemente)
Hansel and Gretel wander lost in a wood.

They should never have been there or here.
They should have resisted their step mother.
They should have berated their weak father.
They should have done this or that
and now they are lost, tired, hungry,
near a pretty candy house in which lives
a witch who waits to welcome children
then eat them.

ii
(andante)
more purposeful perambulation, now in a strange forest filled with exotic birds

The forest is lively with the sounds
of wild birds. They have names
but the children have never heard
these words, never seen such birds.
In the dark branches of fir trees
birds whistle or shriek or chortle.
They make this little known wood
which is already full of terrors
more fearful. Fear fills both children.

x
(ridicolosmente)
an absurd clown or mechanical toy

How it has no soul
but is animated.
How it is driven
but there is no driver.
It moves this way then
stops, jerks to go
another way, hits
against a trunk, upsets
itself but its legs and arms
where it lies on the forest
floor, still twitch, still
operate. The children
watch, nearly laugh at the toy
but cannot make it stop.

xiv
(feroce)
a savage chase around a country fair

He goes after him, past the merry go round
and past the strong man who could carry
the burden of the world on his shoulders.
Ah ha, the persistent and the dangerous
chase that threads through gaps,
between a couple about to embrace,
or a crowd round the coconut shy
behind a man who tries to throw
a ring over a shining foolish desirable
thing. Under awnings and behind the tents
a man runs, another chases with an axe.
Fearful and urgent, this flight.
Unceasing and determined, the pursuit
to see, to chase, to have, to hold,
and axe.

xv
(inquieto)
a disturbed, obsessive expression, possibly of life in communist Russia

As a filing cabinet shuts with a flat noise
so these days make a grey life and cheerless.
Here are the lives of prisoners who are innocent.
Here is snow and ice bound rivers.
Here are persistent police and correct
decisions and the typed reports
and a frozen ideology.
The churches locked, their maintenance
abandoned in these cold days
where there are bleak, short days and sunless.
Where a metal filing cabinet closes the gape
of its drawers, slides shut.

xvi
(dolente)
a wailing peasant-like lament, recurring

I don’t want to leave this far away country
for Ohawe Beach but dolente, the word.
pulls me to a bach and a lament next
door all through one summer night.
We did not know the word kuia.
An old lady had died we said.
The woman I stayed with, called
next door ‘to pay my respects’
she said. That sounded foreign,
a phrase you could italicise.
The night was short and the night
was still except for this improvised sound,
organised by customs I did not understand.
It was years ago this happened.
I was sixteen years old. I remember
that grief in Taranaki, the wailing
that excluded me.

xx
(lento irrealemente)
surreal, releasing us finally from the microcosmic world Prokofiev has held us in.

There and there and there,
two lost children,
one dark wood,
We too feel lost.
in the middle
and fearful.
The cries of birds
disturb us unnecessarily
or we watch a pursuit
at a fair, the chased
and the chaser fast
through crowds,
the chased man gained
upon but never caught.
What they did was watched
from a concrete office
observed, noted, filed
There and there and there
until we woke
or until we found
our way through the wood
or stopped.
We emptied the offices
and filing cabinets.
The mourners stopped wailing,
went back to ordinary lives.


Mary Ayre played nos i, ii, x, xiv, xv, xvi, xx from Prokofiev’s Visions Fugitives Opus 22
in the Nelson Cathedral on 29 November 2014. Her programme notes included her idea
about each vision. It is her notes I’ve italicised and used to start each section of this poem.

Posted in 69: TRANSTASMAN | Tagged

Against Despair

Posted on August 1, 2015 by Carolyn McCurdie

Sunlight burnishes the wooden floor
where each chair has been placed
in precise relation to the long table.
Cutlery and glassware stretch their parade-ground
gleam the whole length and in regular bursts,
lavender and small yellow roses lean awry
in vases, as if there is such a thing
as good intent.

The timbers of the old jetty grow soft with salt.
Water seeps.
Beneath, the piles are emaciated, but just for now
they resist the slurp, suck of the tide, the undermining.
Marine larvae have scored the wood surfaces
with sleepwalking meanders.

In the window there are two candles, unlit.
They’re visible from the street.
A match-box with its sides unmarked so far
rests on the sill, by the latch, as if there is still time
for patience.

Posted in 69: TRANSTASMAN | Tagged

always becoming, the octopus

Posted on August 1, 2015 by Frankie McMillan

at the Fred Astaire show
his bulky head

sways in time to the dancer’s moves

The electric toe dancing novelty
is a name he’d like to steal

light fingered he admires
the pianist, his swivel stool

the way his legs float above the floor

in a choreography of desire
the octopus wants

to mimic the pianist’s coat
black sleeves sweeping the keys

music trailing behind

this should have been
a Victorian ship wreck poem.

Posted in 69: TRANSTASMAN | Tagged

South China, migration

Posted on August 1, 2015 by Brett Cross

I saw her and him
flying upwards

a black bowl
rice-flecked

as though migrating to warmth
ancestral route

Posted in 69: TRANSTASMAN | Tagged

The River

Posted on August 1, 2015 by Adam Stewart

the hills sink through sky
the river flooding again
my dad on his knees in a field
talking to his dead mother

who is the symbol of a
plastic flower rotating softly
in the nothingwind
of a hometown

watery voicehole catching
that gurgle in the throat
when she lived, the river
running herself flat like battery

underneath the trees
and their hush-hushing firs
beckoning to other seasons
out of neon autumn

the dead come to us
from the centre of the earth
where we place them
to rise like bubbles

the dead come to us
from miles away like
the poem or the idea that
there is something beyond the hills

in the clouds, the testament
worth reaching for
the recycling of stone
my dad’s stubborn knees

collecting in a graveyard
that which moves backwards
like the rain falling up
like that particular david lynch

my dad bowed like an animal
breathing and only breathing
the hills and their feet
galloshing for him alone

Posted in 69: TRANSTASMAN | Tagged

Movers and Shakers

Posted on August 1, 2015 by Richard Reeve

Immersed in the ruin made of our yard by the digger, I tried to pick
porcelain, rooted pug, glass from a slurry that accumulated
around the smashed ends of the drain. The whole thing
a disaster
parched, slimy, I raked about in the muck with both shovels:
the sharp, prodding one; the more hard-working, loping one. A fine Bruce

of a tool, something to hide oneself inside the scene with.
The sheen of sliced earth was an eye on me. I clapped it with Bruce,

jabbed it with the prodder, picked out its woken edges, irate jags

poking from the strata, and was in awe at this blind horizon,
a dead sun of sand over the dirt, far-off, ancient teacups
sailing heavy under the lips of the earth. There might have been
an imprint of held-down faces,
some exhibition of the trials
conducted on the headland: the fossil ashes of community
singing by a fire. Shades of composition devolved, assumed

insignificance in the trench, that boneyard, that riding sea.

Posted in 69: TRANSTASMAN | Tagged

Distant Trees

Posted on August 1, 2015 by Sam Sampson

Trees in pleasing contrast

side-on dark effect
to draw the shape ink

either flat or graded reality is an impression
impressions aimed at that other interest

: distant trees

look across country distant
size an important peculiarity of opposites

it is true indoors emits no colour
when seen from this angle
sun in the morning
early afternoon
to stare toward the horizon
we continue to wish

wash in distant hills
(such a luminous result)


…


distant hills :

chance arrangements justify a little framing

studies of trees and figures
hard and unsympathetic without subjugation

in colour and form we square off happy days

‘I’ with a colourful past
‘I am’ perhaps more useful
I like that phrase,
it expresses perfectly the correlation

(a pensive insight in analysing failure)


…

the road beats more powerfully at the base

an honesty in bright coloured flags
or a man’s jersey accentuated with peacock greys

apart from the above
one is dominated by light and shadow

in this sketch
I choose a bluish green… a view, simplified in the mind

distant trees

of certain shape, colour, and size

placed in bright light
displaced…rendered


…


composed of more than the obvious
dissect observations

a madness in genetics

repeat portions for atmospheric effect

out of my depth
demands hours of happy choice, mono-

toned backgrounds…
re-
directions :
opaque colours in a strong wash of ultramarine

I must leave it
transparency that runs around edges

…to look long enough
to look for colours, shadows, sun-

lit
objects casting light, a warmth… pieced…together
memory turning back restoring projections


…


in this handbook extras soak up surplus colour

pan of pure burnt sienna…pale…
pale flesh on cheeks: alizarin crimson

to give depth to something so blue… look up… deep

… greenish, bluish, pale
reflected light

however clear the water
bright reflections translate the latter
dilute actual artifacts
(due to the colour of water)

absolute light

reflections up
on inflections (underwater)
it seems the shape

is the actual process employed upon the placing of light


…


the trick is to love such insignificant features

even the perfect mirror gives a darker view

nothing is unfortunate
yet more common when drawn in proportion

appearance re-makes a face

a hope that it is nearly but not quite in its essence

can I obtain a peculiar charm?

this freshness
softened edge washing out a veracity of colour


…


I am reminded of a delicate surround

a kind of niche: the transparent

golden……
…gleaming……
…seam

clarity distracts my attention

using the same study
in as direct a manner as possible

beauty frames
arrested in altering : arranging nature by design

(of the above remarks I have a better illustration
as things grey
adapting mixtures of primary colours

every object demands something free
a success, suggestion of foliage
mass of outline)


II


forget the absence of open-attachment with occasional light touches of green a
bird’s eye view: say at spots X, Y, and Z… a skeleton of the upper roof and rafters
the tone of roof timber, walls, posts, leaving the mind as a distant boat
drifting: inside highlights, of windows and spots of skylight…

light at first, curse, the first: Fig. B, you will see another part of the same tree, let go
of green, taste the blue and burnt sienna : process the other side, and so on: on one
side, on each edge keep a sense of the whole, a little part, a pattering, a putting on, a
new tint or tone : distance, a middle distance, re-

run… translate Fig. A: the foreground at once stationary, when there is no time to stop
or question… go on, now add a touch of crimson lake : the architecture, limitless,
hurries past :
reproduction is doubt’s mutual pleasure: still life : or true life, a child,
furniture, flowers, a row of trees, literally as they were : Fig. B shows nothing but the
composition, better to stand still than spoil its whereabouts: intersect | W, to join the
line X : then immediately to C, and continue the square : Fig. D extends, ricochets in
counter-balance, situated amid an indistinct pattern

in so far as lines and masses such a simple colour scheme helps to hold the picture: a
transparency, a thin fog large and stately, a manual on…from life, a manual on
configuration : a manual with trees–grass–distant trees–clouds–reflections–of colour–
pure colour–landscape traits:

an attempt at that happy combination


III


what a happy medium life conveys : silence, to seek directions, plus in part, the use of
one word over another : when too hard one makes glint or groove in which the world
settles : oxygen from ruminations follows wing-tips : again endings… the advantage
of using one’s own imagination can point out fault-lines without remembrance…O

…to be swept on, excepting the slightly heavier tone, I must remind myself of the
vital subject: this composition, how it emphasises the peculiarity of loss, I have no
real link but that of subterfuge: the ability to go on is important, to let the mixture get
muddy

(to mix more than is necessary

generally remembering light is entering from a comparatively present future)

highlights…I can advise little on how to advance a path serving its own purpose, the
components of this poem have made me envious of those who set forth for the first
time: that difficult tipping of a hat to those fugitives who first harnessed light: exterior
bric-à-brac…fittings pin-pointing a tone, a timbre, a distant tree.

Posted in 69: TRANSTASMAN | Tagged

On Early Trains

Posted on August 1, 2015 by Jack Ross

(after Boris Pasternak)

Fields fade to mauve in the heat
through the window villagers
stroll what is there to kiss
everything you see melts to soft wax

you dream not asleep dreaming
of being asleep there is someone
sleeping here two black suns
scorching their lashes through their eyelids

sun-beams catch iridescent insects
the glass of dragon-flies the second-
class carriage full of comings
and goings like a clock­maker’s kit

you seem to be sleeping
in a vice of numbers
high above in amber the hands
of a clock dividing the air

noting fluctuations in heat
get up from your seat adjust
the clock lean out scatter the shadows
pierce the fug of the day

register yourself on its blue dome
your home your happiness sinking
down past the wreck of your dreams
happy people never help the clock

these two slept in its beams

Posted in 69: TRANSTASMAN | Tagged

Postcards (1)

Posted on August 1, 2015 by Cameron Griffiths
Every time she comes home, enters her childhood room, she opens the box stored in the bottom draw. Shuffles and reshuffles the collection of unsent postcards, full of joy and resolve. On a bench in a London railway station, looking up through the kaleidoscope-like glass dome, she dreamt of her media naranja. Before dawn in the Yucatán, the curandero ran an egg over her skin to cleanse her aura, then put the egg in water to read. Told stories of the riddled hillside behind her. At Nazca, where the dry, windless plateau preserves the hummingbird and shark, she could see far into the distance, and became disoriented by the vast numbers and disembodied voices. Sometimes she feels these are the scenes at which parts of herself split off and moved in different directions, left with and left behind. She places the postcards back in the hand-bound box that warps like a personality. Waits for the low tide, before walking out along the estuary to watch a leaf unfurl, its slow trembling, easy performance.


Note: The final line uses found material.

Posted in 69: TRANSTASMAN | Tagged

In My Shifts

Posted on August 1, 2015 by Jill Jones

I come in with language
I come out of.
Its weed, its shrill bugs.
A harvest, a rot, a dervish.
Cooked into night.
Swum from beginnings.
Patterns at the bottom of a pool.
Something that doesn’t fit.
That shifts and fills
my face with stone air
sweet fetid sound
or I sit down with it.

If it feeds me or anyone.
Perhaps with the birds.
Perhaps with imprecation.
Perhaps with what
the sun and rains
tell me, perhaps today.
With my feet muttering.
With technique and nurture.
And my hand that allows
me to come
in with language
then without.

Posted in 69: TRANSTASMAN | Tagged

Trumpet Vine

Posted on August 1, 2015 by James Norcliffe

There was that tower
they built on the hill high above you
up by the reservoir,
remember?

The tower that frightened you
so much you wanted to wear
a lead helmet because of
the emanations,

until I pointed out that lead
was probably more dangerous.
You’d be better off chopping
the damn thing down

then taking your axe to the plastic,
the petrol, the asbestos, the 245T,
except that you wouldn’t have the time,
remember,

or the energy already sapped
by the emanations. Better to
change shape, become a vine
and climb, climb

flamboyantly, climb and smother
foliate and tendril, trumpet vine
cow itch vine, and flower there,
enjoy the view.

Posted in 69: TRANSTASMAN | Tagged

Sonnet from João of iGoli

Posted on August 1, 2015 by John Mateer

Sublime, as the cliché would have that aria,
at breakfast in a Brisbane cafe. Which? João can’t remember
the opera, though he does, well, the Singaporean
poet Cyril, the singer. Years later João would read, when young,
he had been an escort as well as an excellent student of voice,
confiding in the interview how he used to give sympathy
fucks to men whose lives seemed so desultory
the carnal was their only kindness. Recalling Cyril, not as castrato,
as genuine angel, João is reflecting that Sunyata, or Infinity,
is such a being, who in the midst of breakfasting poets
brings “La Traviata” and Brisvegas into a synergy
that can only be listened to unspeaking, marvelled
at. That moment was real, João feels, and worldly.
He had thought, I hope they’ve noticed, too. Not just me.

Posted in 69: TRANSTASMAN | Tagged

Seven Tanka

Posted on August 1, 2015 by Richard von Sturmer

A dog pants
in the noonday heat;
under her gaze
ants are tracing
invisible pathways.


I would throw Rilke’s
bowl of roses
out the window
and let the room become
as cold as ice.


The Nametaking River
took his name away.
Now he forgets himself
and the shallow waters
are full of sunken logs.


Coat hangers migrate
from wardrobe to wardrobe.
Always the same pigeon
ruffling its feathers
on the window ledge.


Over the years
our lives touched
like two drifting boats.
Now for you there is just
the infinite sea.


On my bedside table:
a snuffed candle, a bath plug,
a rusted bread knife—
objects to keep the angels away
so I can get a good night’s sleep.


An old mirror rests
on the ocean floor.
Small red fish
filled with delight
see themselves as flames.

Posted in 69: TRANSTASMAN | Tagged

Heaven, Bruny Island

Posted on August 1, 2015 by Ken Bolton

,… like the Mets I’m coming up to bat
in the bottom of the 9th, or maybe the 8th, if I’m lucky
but far behind in the game—
and the music seems to have stopped to listen.

—Tony Towle listening to the radio, in ‘Digression, 5/10/03’


Our first whole day on the island:
coffee at the shop, then drive to the beach
at Cloudy Bay & walk it—half an hour, more,
keeping to the liminal line on the sand
where the water has just dried.
Vast clouds of Pacific Ocean gulls
rise as we approach, mill in the air, like tea-leaves stirred
in a clear cup.
White underneath, glimpses of white flash
as they bank, circle, & spiral away.
Successive
waves of them do this—till the beach is cleared.
The sea is on our right
as we walk—southwards, I guess—a long gentle arc.
Just us. The air clear, as if recently washed—as we advance slowly
upon the distance. Dome of sky overhead.
The scale is a little vast for photographing.
Eventually I take a series of photos—that I will glue where they
overlap—
mountains that, as the eye moves left, become
the heads,
& then open water—& heads again. At two points
I take some vertical shots—one capturing
white cloud towering above,
above darker blue-black cloud at its base—
in the foreground showing the brass-coloured
sand
where water an inch deep slides back to the sea,
glazed momentarily, showing
the sky & cloud—immense—reflected there
a mirror image. It looks great: Ireland, New Zealand, I think.
A little light for either—
but they’ll like that, surely. Further left
I do this again: sky above, clear—& unbroken horizon
where sky meets sea—& Cath, knee deep, out
beyond the second
line of waves—her white top & green pants—where she appears
a second time, upside down, reflected, closer to—
where she stands,
admiring New Zealand, or the South Pole,
where they stand, in the distance. Stand notionally.
It is Macquarie Island I think Cath thinks is
next stop/last stop. Along with White Rock, Pedra Blanca—
And then the Pole.

As I walk —we turn finally & set out
back to the car— I seem to be addressing
my Dublin friends, & Michael Fitzjames.
The Dubliners, Tony Curtis particularly, I always think of
on Bruny.
Tony travels & would like this—the one bit of Australia
he hasn’t seen. I think because we bought this place
soon after I met them. Michael’s Di came down
with Cath on her last trip—Coogee friends—Sydney.
He’s got my email address now—rang Cath requesting it—
having decided
to move a step closer to the present—the late part
of the 20th century, the early part of this. Or has he been
emailing people for years—others, not me?
I mostly want to tell him
how much less I can see as my eyes deteriorate—
though actually
seeing is what I do best, what keeps my mind
happy, busiest—the constant noting of detail
& of composition, relationship—
but in fewer kinds of light
(as the mind thinks
in its own disordered way
—about history, some line
of logic or rhetoric or argument
—’memes’, are they?—
sorted, shuffled,
recorded. Confirmed.
Stirred like the tea-leaf birds …
for some furthering remark or for
launching off with
—(the article I came across
that I do not want to write
opening it in my
notebook
‘Necessary Fictions’—
something ‘on spec’
for a ditzy, high-paying editor
who might not take it
who says she wants something ‘philosophical’
yike,
you gibbering idiot
—something philosophic, & apropos of nothing—
you write it!)
As an artist
there is much here he could paint
& I am conscious, driving from the beach, of the shades of
olive & of lighter green—
the silver-grey tree trunks, & the ‘black’—
the clouds
of every shade
from palest silver & shale
to blue & blue-grey-black,
the telegraph poles—at long, country intervals—the same
regular grey-white, solemn, dramatic contrast
with the spinach-green behind (I saw one once,
recently limed, a startling mint or menthol stripe
like
the green on the face of Mme Matisse—but it has faded.
I see that pole again this trip
& it is the regulation neutral silver-grey)
… the tan
—& tan-mixed-with-coffee grounds
(of burnt wood & wet leaves, ti-tree)—
that shades the blond sand, that swathes &
firms & darkens
around knolls & depressions. Is it water-courses,
or the wind in the sand? A Siamese cat’s
colouring.

Jules I also think of, at work, & the others—
Mel,
Michael, Teri.
We have known each other so long,
have worked together—Julie & I—over twenty years.
Watching each other die—or
“move towards the end of our lives”.
More considerate as we get older.

It is weird to be somewhere they don’t know.

They’d like it. The New Zealanders
would like it
—it’s ‘McCahon’ enough (tho does it lack the
required ‘punitive gloom’?)—
the peaked, volcanic-looking hills
around the harbours,
the peninsulas that recede one behind the other
into a uniform powdery blue—
& Michael, painter Michael, (so many
Michaels in this)—
to whom it won’t be strange
—having done his Tasmanian time
decades ago—
but Bruny is different, distinct somehow,
material for his eye.
(Di liked it.)

Laurie, another distant friend, walks a less trackless landscape—
in the footsteps of countless, commentating
British, Normans & Saxons,
walking where Mathew Arnold walked,
or Wells. Here, people
in a different headspace
walked before me of course.
Cath walks here now.
She says, from the bedroom —(as I
wash the dishes)—
they are Kelp Gulls, about the same size as Pacific Gulls
& a bit darker on top,
gathering in groups of a couple of hundred
about now, on
“islands south of Hobart”.
Not quite the span.
Called Dominicans because of their black & white,
their span just a little less

The big number makes it likely. We always see Pacific Gulls
in ones or twos, or small quantities. Ordinary
seagulls, by comparison, look tiny when we see them
back in Adelaide. These are large,
ocean-going birds.

I break some kindling for next day’s fires
take a photo, out the window, of the three trees
I love—three vast simple lines stemming
from the same place in the scrub
& spreading apart just slightly as they soar—like
planes at an air show,
about to peal off dramatically though they never do,
three tense splayed fingers passing up
through blue & cloud
& blue.
One has dropped a branch in this year of drought.

I love the island very much. Tho I do not know it as well as Cath.
It takes a while to settle in.
I love the places closer to us—the field opposite, ‘behind’ us—so
French & open & yellow,
against banks of trees along its furthest edge—
where the eagle appears most summer nights at sunset,
patrols for food, something
whose movement will betray it in the open field.
Wooreddy Rd—the view up to it,
the view to the right now they’ve cut down the trees.
Which I at first regretted. Regret still, though the view
of green, against the odd black trunk,
is magical—if less majestic
than the effect of trees on both sides of the avenue—a road
that dips down
then climbs, crests & disappears,
about halfway up the mountain.
Best—though it’s too good to be true—the view
back, from that first Wooreddy crest, down, across the field,
thru framing branches & stark verticals:
a field of yellow, distantly bounded by a copse of trees,
by trees following
a water course, & beyond that a bay of astonishing blue
with an island in it. It all comes out
of Modersohn-Becker,
Kandinsky, Jawlensky, Gabriele Munter.
Michael would look at it & see the cliché it suggests.
What to do with it?
For some reason I want him to see it. For the reason
that I won’t be able to see it myself for much longer—
perhaps? Tho this turns out
not to be true.

The view from the pub is different so many times,
& mysterious—near & far
so intermingle, & on one day register
as firmly-plaited, woven—of air & moisture—a skein
of softened white & blue.
(We’re so far south—
tho I guess we’re facing Dover. Dover, Tasmania—
not Laurie’s & Arnold’s Dover.)
Cloud like woven bread,
moist,
stretched between the heads either side of the harbour—
& above,
or in front of, the island’s shallow peak: Satellite Island,
that sits mid harbour dank & receding,
while the cloud
is low & cool & restful—a white rope of cloud-bread,
that lies over it.
And on another day—different.

New Blundstone boots—just broken in, but about new—$10.
Cath spied them. He’s had his
ten years, still going, Michael says—
a different Michael. Lorraine’s brother, Michael. Might
see me out, I say. “Lord, take these boots
off of me. I can’t use them anymore”. Tho in fact I’m
not about to die—& my eyes are holding out…

Music is on the radio, quietly, as I write this.
It seems to have stopped to listen.

Posted in 69: TRANSTASMAN | Tagged

Easter Sunday

Posted on August 1, 2015 by Brigitte Lewis

I sat at your table
with your chosen family
the 12 illegitimate children
that you all carry in the heaviness around you
the pills she pops
and ciggies she sneaks around the side of the house

I held my intellect in my hand like a broken bottle
mind slamming your other step son with the difference between equality and equity
equality: equal opportunity for everyone no matter their circumstance
equity: opportunity cultivated to create an equal playing field

I told him this even though it was he who was born with the black skin and the absent
father
but I guess we had more in common than I realised then
isn’t it funny sad how the most disenfranchised hold up the privileged without a
moment of critique
I conjured up the time when I was 15 and you asked me
with a glint and a snigger:
are you butch or the other one?
to shame you
to show these people
that your jokes
are insults cultivated to maim and disfigure
but as I sat alone facing the 5 of you
I found nothing but defence
he and his new found soldier identity
her and her self-reflexive jocularity
tut tutting my truth away
and finally your stay at home punch you in the face partner who you will never
officially make your wife who told me
to grow up when I was out the door
when I dared stand up from the that table
and walk out without saying goodbye and following social graces.

And I am reminded yet again
that my stories are mine and yours are yours
and your personhood is the statesman, like the one you used to drive down our
suburban street full of the women and families you had made us
and
today
I am the free woman
because in these months I have spent by my brother’s side wishing things were different
spinning that same old vinyl record
I found only silence
the stab of a skipping needle
and that same decrepit place
where I am the victim and perp and you are the poor misunderstood white man with
money in his pockets but no heart to understand.

I will always be broken in those places where you bent me to your will
where you splintered every hope I ever had of a world where love was unconditional.

And today I know, that the unconditional is only mine to experience, for as you stand,
I stand and we both exhale, shivering from who we have become and all the harsh
words we have said. You have taught me pain, and distance and the agony of wanting
love from someone who doesn’t know how to feel and I have become that too, let it
go, and here I stand, alone, waiting for the world to pull me further into my darkness
so I can be who I was meant to be, because of you.

Forgive me for I have sinned.

and as sinners must

they repent
but I don’t bow down to any patriarchal arrangement
least of all in this language where I have no voice but mimicry.

So I cry myself to vulnerability and back into the arms of the struggle between
becoming what the world order wants and what I need.

and here I breathe.

In sickness and in health.

Til death do us part
and these words
become my only imprint.

My flint that burns away a thousand cobwebs and creates new beginnings, finishes
chapters I left hanging there
by an indent
a missed comma
or a justified paragraph.

This looking glass is my last laugh
and when my voice hits the ears of my best mate of who knows these fairytales all too
well

he throws his head back lets out a roar and says
the day we start taking advice from a Xanax addict named Glenda
is the day we have lost our way.

Posted in 69: TRANSTASMAN | Tagged

Self ie

Posted on August 1, 2015 by Alice Savona

The sap of his word on a headboard
He comes out of jail a famous poem
All line rush buttons bordering breath
Exquisite: our history of hedges

He comes out of jail a famous poet
Squinting to see if she’s carrying commas
Fuckled: our shapeless reunions
Eyes of his whites too close again

Squinting to see if she’s cockled the commas
At night: he writes: or details a seam
Eyes of her whites too close again
You don’t love people so they’ll do what you want

At night: she writes: or details her dream
All lines rush as the drafts draw breath
You don’t love people so you’ll do what they want
The self ie of his poem.

Posted in 69: TRANSTASMAN | Tagged

It was worth something to somebody

Posted on August 1, 2015 by Rachel O'Neill

It was worth something to somebody, my childhood, and I was offered a lot of money for it. They let me keep certain things on the surface. The dogs, the funny shed with spare doors in it and the disco ball. They eventually built a supermarket on the site. I went inside once and walked the aisles. Certain important things had happened in the vicinity of the breads section. I stood at the deli counter and rang the bell. A young man in a stained apron now took the place of an unforgivable shame. I snuck into the staff room. A thin girl was sitting at a table alone struggling to eat a sandwich. I watched a bit of hopeless filling fall out. The security guard appeared and chased me from the store. It was easier to escape this way now than it had been in the past. The stairs were gone, for example. My father had been good on stairs, very nimble. His hurts and muscles a coordinated gang in one man. The security guard stopped on his stoop to shout, not bothering to chase me further than that. While my father had left nothing to chance, the guard knew that the world beyond, in this case, the car park, would soon sort me out.

Posted in 69: TRANSTASMAN | Tagged

The Tithe

Posted on August 1, 2015 by Erin Handley

Don’t argue now, just replace
the off-white milk,
scoop the cotton limbs of cloth
into loose armfuls,
smoke your cigarette outside,
burn the brown of it beside
damp mulch.

Argue about the
angle of the light,
the pull of the steel-blue ocean rip
or how long you can use sandpaper
before it’s ineffectually
smooth.
Just don’t argue about
why she is lost
and why

Posted in 69: TRANSTASMAN | Tagged