The Australian Males Rules American Football Dream

Posted on July 24, 2007 by Joel Magarey

I'm running. I have the ball. I hold it close to my
chest. It's mine. I think I know what it is. I think I
know where I'm running. I think I'm running
towards the touchline. Tall long-haired women
wearing make-up and dresses with padded
shoulders launch themselves into the air, trying
to tackle me. I put my head down and they
bounce off me. I push them in the face and they
fall backwards. They crumple into clouds of dirt
and grass. They sit up and call at my back. I
cannot hear what they say. I'm running. I'm
holding the ball to my chest. I think I know what
it is. I think I'm running towards the touchline.

Posted in 28: INNOCENCE | Tagged

Infidelity

Posted on July 24, 2007 by Joel Magarey

Your call like a trainwhistle sets me running;
I will weep no more by waters.

And there, on the other side, I will reach down
to pick up a handful of sand from the riverbed.
The gum branches rustling behind my back
and then quiet.

A crow re-announcing the silence.

There, I will be walking, coming home again –
the men all gone, the centrebeam cracked,
the wood used up so long ago
it hardly seems I left in this lifetime.
And although you stayed on,
and worked, still you too know why.
Here, take back the condolences you sent.
Of course you were free to do as you wanted.
Now go. I've come to close up.

Posted in 28: INNOCENCE | Tagged

The Woman of Rome

Posted on July 24, 2007 by Jennifer Compton

La Romana. By Alberto Moravia.
I read it at 13 snugged up in bed
in my aunt's house in Kilbirnie –
having rejected my own home in
Rongotai. For the usual reasons.

One hand on my mons veneris
eyebrows approaching hairline
at the spendthrift and amoral
atmosphere, the recklessness,
Europe! Not knowing yet that

I am reading in translation –
there are other languages.
But panting towards the source.
And my father arrives. Like a prince.
Offering me a packet of scorched almonds.

I accept them – like a princess –
like one who will one day be a queen
turn back towards the appalling book.
Scorched almonds are marvellous but
La Romana has my complete attention.

Posted in 28: INNOCENCE | Tagged

In the Wee Hours

Posted on July 24, 2007 by Jane Williams

Otherwise faithfuls whisper wrong names into the ears of lovers
who keep breathing but do not stir
do not give the impression they heard a word out of place

A child wakes sits bolt upright in bed but still asleep
and screams run for your lives the house is on fire

A woman dreaming of the cliff edge of her marriage
clings with renewed hope to her side of the bed

Insomniacs try to run out of things to count

A grandmother of six plugs herself into her own theme music
runs a hot scented bath introduces herself to herself

as the Queen of Sheba slipping cat like between lives

Drug induced sleepers dream dreams they won't remember
but will go about their day all day
checking their pockets certain they've lost their keys

A father watches the clock tick over curfew tries not to remember
what he got up to at that age calls his daughter's name to
come / heel / stay     as if this     could ever bring her home

And the body becomes just that as the soul struggles to equal
the simple sum of subtracting a dead weight from a live one

Posted in 28: INNOCENCE | Tagged

all the cats and blind puppies

Posted on July 24, 2007 by Eric Yoshiaki Dando

all the cats and blind puppies
who thought they were tragic
went out gagging on ropes,
burned beyond recognition
wrapped in plastic

some of them died accidentally in traffic

most of my drug buddies
                     are coming close to spastic

we just can't communicate

(except with magic)

Posted in 28: INNOCENCE | Tagged

micro

Posted on July 24, 2007 by Eric Yoshiaki Dando

she's so fast
it burns up my sandals
the sun hits the glass
like a million billion candles

twisted
frosted
insect
lady

and the sun
melts the plastic
clean
from my handles

Posted in 28: INNOCENCE | Tagged

Barking Mad

Posted on July 24, 2007 by Ellie Francis-Brophy

And finally with little one, first
stuffed-up nose for the year,
struggling to stay asleep, tucked in behind her.
It reveals itself.
The meaning of the 'awful past'.
A sudden downpour, hard for air to get through.
The slap across her face that leaves her jaw clicking.
O clouds unfold! Waters broke, a warmth running down her spine.
For it's about her stupid empathy being exploited. About her
youthful gullibility being disarmed and
savaged and made to account for things it didn't
cause or start or, even, ever consider.
How she was wrong-footed, dumb-headed
for a man who ran at her with a machete, an idle hammer, a mobile phone
a man who tried to have her arrested for sedition,
sentenced for his thefts with her signature.
How her believing in standing up for the underdog
lacked serious assessment of that dog's training and character.
How she's never been very interested in domestic animals.

And finally with little one, double
doses of vitamin C,
pockets padded with cough lollies and tissues, twirling ahead of her,
She can see how it happened.
Like a Pilger expose, the inverted pyramid
that silenced her ambitions.
Who she was, when she was like this, over and again,
A seasonal problem? Always October to December.
Why she was the way she was and
what of that poisonous cock with a tail, and other shadows like him.
Those lost years, her toxic shock syndrome.
She is that woman who married in secret, in blue
And divorced in town, in red.
Without cowering, forgetting to eat or wishing to forget
She remembers it all.

Posted in 28: INNOCENCE | Tagged

Madonna and Child

Posted on July 24, 2007 by Ed Wright

At the beach a young mother,
after a moment's absent-mindedness,
chases her young son up the line of wet sand
where the bluebottles are drying to harmlessness.

When she reaches him
paddling on the edge of death without concern
she seizes him tight with fear-tangled love.

He is secretly happy for the attention
Yet sullen at her interference in his unknown plans
and stamps his pudgy feet.
Her tyrannical love has happened
a thousand times already
and he knows how to make it again –
just a few short steps, repeated, virtually anywhere.

Posted in 28: INNOCENCE | Tagged

‘a shooting star’

Posted on July 24, 2007 by Ed Wright

a shooting star
a flashing sword
a nibbled ear
a young man in a torpedo at dawn
preparing to die
his letter to his parents written
he nibbles the memory one last time
of the soft skin behind his sweetheart's ears,
shivers at how she trembled under his tongue
when she gave herself
the night of their unknown marriage,
then hits the switch,
like a man who has fully lived,
rigid with impossible passion,
he shouts Banzai
holds her face dissolving
and shoots forward to meet his death.

Posted in 28: INNOCENCE | Tagged

Wanton Boys

Posted on July 24, 2007 by Ed Wright

In the park on a sunny day while we're waiting
for my mother to get a word in edgeways with Mrs Jones
my brother and I are frying ants with a magnifying glass
And calling it scientific.

I am secretly pretending they are Mrs Collins' cats
because she hates me,I don't know why,
and I hate her for picking on me in class, but not the cats
Only it's the best way I can think of to make her cry.

Once I spent three hours on a beanbag just thinking,
I timed it, no TV or nothing, but my family never leaves me alone.
My mother's always shouting, Edmund, clean your room.
But she doesn't live in it, so why.

I've got a crush
on my friend's sister who sits in her living room
pretending to be a mushroom, because in my house
imagination has pretty much been banned,

but let's get back to the ants.
something about this is making me vaguely uneasy,
Yet the thrill of the science and the sizzle,
my hand on the throttle of destiny, is very clear indeed.

When I grow up, I want to be God or close to him
but I'm keeping it a secret.
Since my brother still wants to be an astronaut
And if he keeps beating me at monopoly,
When we both know he is cheating
I'll be sending an asteroid to blow him up.

Sometimes, being the younger one sucks.

Posted in 28: INNOCENCE | Tagged

Caracol (Snail)

Posted on July 24, 2007 by Dianne Cikusa

menacing Persons, left behind
the shadow
of their passive insensitivity

[crushed housing]

Regards, city-siders
we accept
your delirious ovation,
and neatly recite
     leatherbound policy
on behalf of
those greased morsels
who never owned a voice
to publicise the anguish
of patented choice; glazed
will and self-raising skin

domestic squeals
permeated by human erotica

[de-beaked] performance
making quiet outcry-
splitting hairs
in barbed cages,
but ne'er on heartless heads

God gave them half
a chance to speak,
until world
made them swallow
such lethal doses
of cosmetic flaws;
 spirits,
drowning in accessories

lined stomachs
are spilling dignity;

I know you're green:
      it's those
vegetables
went down the wrong way,
carnivorous lust in reflux

– I'm rambling
to protect my swollen testament

gather my thoughts,
before you squash them carelessly

So haven't we all
recoiled
from the covert stench
of superior dialogue, cut and
pasted in social gridlock

Though we meant not
to gauge a relished reaction,
merely to mirror
the deafening mannerisms
that were hushing up pink faces

[Too late] now that
rigor mortis
got us
tongue-tied
under the table, blissfully
  Drinking a toast
  to
pretty conversational pieces
that would never
disturb the ecology,
(assuming we all politely agreed)

Here's a good pinch

of snickering laxatives, yet
to be administered by watering-can

lucky lady sat on a
 cat with sixty-nine lives

The humble bee,
  he sits on his own sting
steaming weapons too easily
evaporating his focus;

And didn't you know-
by avoiding death,
you were graciously killing people.

Posted in 28: INNOCENCE | Tagged

life in the miniature steam-train village

Posted on July 24, 2007 by Derek Motion

some of us do stay here      i have a room under

the miniature tunnel the door is a drain-cover

a secret i open only when the tourists have gone

some of the overalled men have wives & they are civil

in fact they smile more than us 'residents'

they often drink from thermoses

they tinker with the engines they collect tickets

       but then they go home

some wives are dead & so we move in here

there are various parts of the community vacant

one hair-pin down near the petunia bed & estuary in particular

that corner has a bad feel to it: the site of a derailing

       back in the 70s it's our equivalent of cheap-real-estate

train-enthusiasts are superstitious       with good reason

on purple nights when we all gather to drink beer & spin

monologues around the tiny turnpike       then perfectly-scaled spirits walk

the village comes alive with their spectral whispers

some seem to catch in my beard       a mixture of human cries

(the justly dead span generations:       the boy gurgling in the water not

yet talking –        the heart-attack veterans out for one last reminisce)       but

also the fairies we created ourselves giggle

the dwarves cease their mining & gather to connive

there is a swarthy & strange life in this place it

is pungent at times       i run the trains by day

       by night      under the tunnel      i write

Posted in 28: INNOCENCE | Tagged

feelings

Posted on July 24, 2007 by Derek Motion

brianna pushed steve no-one could've expected that

the taxi-rank still flourishing sometime near the early

hours removed him from place like superfluous words

edited falling into victoria park he yells an effort lost to

engines & road & sirens once reading levertov her use of

          plucking i read as fucking steve was dyslexic too

    never bothered us though his removal by brianna the

bit of blood & his sure clique ejection might've cured him only

ghosts there though listening to some obscure lines he takes away

fragments of syntax muttered at a desk-sergeant & the night

Posted in 28: INNOCENCE | Tagged

one

Posted on July 24, 2007 by Derek Motion

drinking seven beers standing up

but then it's yesterday's kid's party

(light plays over a cake it's an eight it's

shaped like a race-track (the standing

the thing to remember & also there are

people looking like characters from macbeth

they are in various stages of decay (makes you

smile (there is probably haiku sentiment

on the wind outside (where cricket

was discarded (a while back

the bat stands there

Posted in 28: INNOCENCE | Tagged

Painting Rain

Posted on July 24, 2007 by Carolyn van Langenberg

For Yuko Matsuzawa
 
 
 
silence
in splash
deft
brush
fine
deepening
the rib of light

in the language of touch
silk
spins
wet
her loop of mind
classical
she is
painting rain

Posted in 28: INNOCENCE | Tagged

Test Walk

Posted on July 24, 2007 by Carol Jenkins

In Atlanta a man takes a prosthetic leg
for a test walk and does not come back.

When I am six I find my Great Uncle Sid's
tin leg alone in the hall. He is asleep in the next room.

In Afghanistan a girl touches the wing of a green
parrot and her hand flies off.

Sid's leg is the fleshy pink of tinned salmon.

Centres in Baghdad, Basra and Najef supported by the International
Committee of the Red Cross fit 11,956 prostheses.

Watching boys play handball, a mother in Mosman remarks
that library fines for overdue books cost an arm and a leg.

Posted in 28: INNOCENCE | Tagged

Trade-ins: Small Arms

Posted on July 24, 2007 by Carol Jenkins

And then there is the soft innocence of small arms,
the round oval of the wrist/stock, the clarity of skin/metal,
the single crease inside the elbow/trigger that tells it.

What happens to the rest of the body
when they've sold the arms? – at eight, he asks,
after listening to us talk.

In Colombia the militia might slit the skin
of his forehead or pectoral to pack in brown-brown
– raw amphetamine – and top up this charge
with booze and ganja, so fear cannot be found
in any of the atoms left in his eight-year old head.
He'd be given orders, a machete, an M16 –
a light child-sized innocent sort of small arm,
– -ex-US Excess Defense. He would find
the answer is, once the arm is severed at the shoulder
or wrist, -short or long-sleeve as they say –
a man, a woman or a child, will live or bleed to death.

Posted in 28: INNOCENCE | Tagged

The Sum

Posted on July 24, 2007 by Cameron Lowe

for Tess
 
 
Already the world
is waiting for you.

Loaves,
discs of sun,

moth wings drifting
through an ancient night.

The sum
of all imaginings

rests in you,
seeds glowing

in the warm dark,
a deep music

circling your heart.
There's a song

to sing you forth
into this screaming light;

forgive us as we sing it.

Posted in 28: INNOCENCE | Tagged

Listerine™ on skinned knees

Posted on July 24, 2007 by Brentley Frazer

Your whale tethered to a pier is
symbol of the difference between
our generations, this process of
being that fosters experience,
this treacle dimension in which
the unknown discovers itself.

It's gotten thinner this syrup,
since you ran for your brother
showing the discovery, the dead
docked mammal knocking its skull
on the pylons. You didn't mention
it but I could imagine the shrieking

of children, the squeak of swings,
the fact that you could back then
still see lobsters in the rock ponds,
an octopus in the shadows of the jetty.

Where are we going now my friend?
All of us I mean, billions on a
pebble soaring through a void,
circling one another as gulls
around a jellyfish on the sand;
why do you now cower in the shadow

of the other, under the tongue of
the mirror self, soft as the incest
of wings, the summer when you first
loved? I remember as though yesterday
pouring Listerine‚™ on my sister's
skinned knees and the way they

continued to bleed through her
stockings at church. She screamed so
the neighbour looked over our fence,
yet the world turns on, none-the-less.

Posted in 28: INNOCENCE | Tagged

What I Did On My Holidays

Posted on July 24, 2007 by Anthony Jones

Soft parts of my floor and
Soft parts of my cup of coffy.
Sun bloats across the wall,
Softening things into one day of many.
Pixelated holiday. All the interesting bits
Are hard to see.

When you have smudged me, brushed and pummeled me
I will mumble something about having nothing to say.

Except: check out these spurty oranges.
We eat them in car,
Become those kids you didn't want to play with.
Sticky fingered pigs.
Dust to slash dry creases on my knuckles.
I end up bleeding in the heat.

Turn off the wave-machine.
The Mediterranean is stagnant hot.
The stones are round and good for chucking.
I can learn the birds. Learn the language.
Check the auguries.
Calm down.

Posted in 28: INNOCENCE | Tagged

Shrapnel

Posted on July 20, 2007 by Angela Costi

The day she decided to wear an explosive belt
equipped with a detonator and a thumb-press button,
and closer to her heart she wore the companion vest
with quilt-size pockets, packed with nails, screws, bolts
and lead balls (smaller than marbles but made like cannons),
was the day I was given the results of my scans
and shown my body as a border of bone and organ
where the fields were infiltrated with cluster bombs,
they spied at least eleven, designed to break the nerves.

This was the day she walked the streets of her world
with reverence for trees, houses, shadows and the day
I walked the streets of my suburb with reverence for trees,
houses, shadows and, as in a dream, we passed each other,
she as my stranger, me as hers, each of us bathing the other
with a familiar salute.

Later that day, we each walked into a popular cafe,
pretended interest in the menu, were pleased to find
the waiter efficiently trained to avert our gaze,
we sucked in the chatter, the gossip, the shoptalk,
the boredom, the romance, the stalker, the loner,
but when she opened her overcoat, I wished
I were there to have zipped it back up, taken her arm,
led her away, back to her suburb, house, room-
where she allows me to take off her coat,
the belt with its canisters, the vest with its cannons,
I help her into her pink nightdress, kiss her forehead,
switch on her lamp then slip back into my night,
wrapping my coat firmly around my body –
if only I could swaddle myself like a baby
to keep me from self-harm.

Posted in 28: INNOCENCE | Tagged

The Rabbit Soprano

Posted on July 20, 2007 by Allan Peterson

Fear has a voice I had not expected, even from the mute.
For terror it was worse.
When I arrived she was wild-eyed, wet from their mouths,
moon-colored, feet hapless.
I heard it once long before the Irish opera using child sopranos
as woodland animals
or the Andover arts frameworks for teaching children to sing
on pitch with appropriate dynamics
the song 'Mr. McGregor,' or one Terese Rabbit, soprano,
now performing in Georgia,
my white Flemish Giant slipped through the pickets
without my knowing and was found by dogs
Such human terrifying notes no known soprano hits,
mortal shrieks no composer uses,
piercing walls, urgency passing through masonry and time.

Posted in 28: INNOCENCE | Tagged

Homology

Posted on July 20, 2007 by Allan Peterson

My hand reaches into a batwing,
delicate pectoral maneuvering a fish,
the oar in plesiosaur,
even the sound cupping an ear.
Some form is revealing, some obscure.
Without experience, what could be predicted
from the huge black piano, one wing open.
Where would the necessary hands be waiting.
What I have read and forgotten has fallen back
into the books Frances is dusting
and rearranging by subject: all clouds together,
animals touching, a mythical shelf.
Outside, a beetle opens itself to read about flying.
Hard covers, then pages of wings, then stories
we can see through, then lifts off.
What I have read and remember, form into form,
should be written down before I lose it:
milkweed, which is straw into silver,
sperm in a kayak, harvestmen built like a star,
and all of those mandibles chattering
what they know, that flock of hands
asleep in the trees, my hand feeling its way
backwards through the raucous, jostling, bones.

Posted in 28: INNOCENCE | Tagged

Innocence

Posted on July 20, 2007 by Adam Aitken

Remember the sundowner,
those bullet point recipes
for WW2 American cocktails?
Those poolside romps with
vacationing English teachers,
sunburnished Nova Scotian girls?
Remember the Dubai go-between?
Before you went for the sainthood?

Remember the days of caramel brandy
and Bali Hai, beer of shabby Princes?
Your cocktail windscreen wipers
and the spin-dry fluorescence
of a disco's ultra violet.
Your driver parked by Heaven,
where make-shift futures men talked and stalked,
and chatted up the girls, the boys,
and the in-betweens.
Remember the little guy
on Nowhere Corner
texting HQ on SMS?

Remember the secret code for laughter?
Remember laughter?

Posted in 28: INNOCENCE | Tagged