The tea room on the top floor of our workplace
looked down the street to the hospital.
One morning someone at our table
asked ‘what’s the oily smoke coming from atop the hospital?’
Unwittingly, I said, being a hospital,
they could be burning flesh.
My companion, a Russian and a long since refugee from Reich Three
fixed my gaze with round steely Slavic eyes.
From one metre, over her tea
she said, emphatically
‘wrong colour’.
(after Agnes Martin)
border is barely different
but the difference holds
liquid from teeming
(to know I’m afraid
breaks me off in small pieces)
after. noon. relief’s
weather.
still house, since. and disks
of milksun cast across cat’s body
which seems a single
darkest bruise—
sunk through with light.
this work.
luckily my eyes see less
and less well, else its
grain would assail me:
photo image in a book
whose spine is not yet
broken (can one come back
from fear? its stream
must drizzle at a pace
integratable in a life—
yes questions of chemistry)
milk.
mayonnaise.
(the way I was so wet, so freshly
painted, with you
—our even pond)
to draw sobs.
—sobs from sheer patience
safer,
skin’s wait turned auditory
(today, earlier I read
high philosophy (kind, hard) then careened
below and parallel
to
concrete monument offsetting
sky. to music. flying in thought
through an air we might have named
there’s more and more
I will not have wired to you.)
beats along imperceptible lines,
fine species of metal ear
(my timid, listening eyes
and my person
having named fear)
do not f— this painting
but might avoid it:
pale,
held.
held to hold open. its formation,
apparently without noise, inscrutable:
art of ab. stain. ing.
from anticipation
( w/r/t futures’ width metre
saturation tone)
and now: [a list of all the words that sound
the sounds of colourless liquid]
I send the message, waiting
waiting
read
restless
a bramble of thorns
underneath my skin
and then
a bouncing ellipsis
·..
.·.
..·
like manna rained down
a reply
a sunbeam
struck down to the earth
plunged into my sternum
to hold up the sky
I had never taken his advice, which seemed counterintuitive and grotesque, like eating meat from a can. I had spent most of my life trying to lower any expectation that had attached itself to me, as if to increase the likelihood that I might one day inadvertently exceed it. My greatest temptation had always been to act in order to recount the action in words at a later date.
And so there I was, in a headlock onboard the Sweet Pea, supposedly writing it all down.
I’ll tip it! I’ll tip it! My brother yelled as he shifted his grip on my neck. Trying to have a conversation with him had become like trying to sit comfortably on a couch covered in aluminium foil.
What, I said. What. What do you want?
There was a curl of waxed rope at my feet, and I was trying to get enough leverage so that I could heft one of its extremities into his face.
You’re not even listening, he said.
If he had one wish, it would be for everything to remain the same, always.
I am, I said.
You’re –
Yeah, no, I am. What do you think I’m doing? I’m listening, okay? I’m listening.
Okay, he said, and relaxed insofar as we could both bend our knees. Then what are you writing.
trying to breastfeed in the rain
over my grandmother’s grave
I express more tears than milk.
they run down the face of the smartphone
I hold to my cheek with one stiff shoulder
(half an hour on hold with the woman from Telstra).
I want to tell her “I have lost my milk.”
(my grandmother, I mean
but maybe the Telstra woman will do).
my eyes sting hotter than my daughter’s lips in the cold
and I have a bad latch
and the artificial lake is choked with weed
and I think “I have given suck”
present tense, perfect (meaning past). I have fallen
short, failed the test
set out in pamphlets, manuals, in the mouths of babes
and midwives
and I could dash my brains out
on the calm synthetic marble
where the inscription reads “here lies”
and I am lying, pretending,
trying to breastfeed in the rain,
in the rain, in the hard hard rain:
let it come down
book a space by the river––not
too close
to the tangle weed friend
dive for hours in the most
severely dimpled wells these
tender fingers
tease fret from air
throw clay from their whole like…
an instinctual animal
remember
the fern creek? the bare ridge
on top of the world
the non
descript corner the dotted silk
sparkle
in their green eyes’ dell?
stars shimmering out of a
wracking mile
like a book-come-alive
the moons––bouncing at the back
mesmerised
our corn popped out
and flew in the…
everywhere we took a bite
twenty years later
grasp its wafer
of threadbare mesh
and in she rocks
a soft-grey cloud
mirrored bright in a river
a shiver––mute
elated with flesh
you don’t get that often they all do
I: Day One
Wombat is perfect. Lies as if
resting, lies on gravel road
as if it were cool burrow.
A narrow stream slowly
pools beneath her nose,
blood thickening as it flows.
These hands alone can’t move
her heft; takes bodyweight
to heave her to the verge
leaving scuff-marks
leading from a scribble
of red in shifted dust.
II: Day Two
It’s 40C. Legs splayed ramrod-straight
she is grounded, overblown balloon:
a child’s absurd plaything.
III: Day Four
Wombat stinks. She is collapsed
onto herself, into herself,
fur coat shucked off evenly,
draped around her body
like an army greatcoat.
A zipper of busy maggots
marks her spine, glisten and seethe
in dappled light. Everything in
and on her moves, everything except her.
IV: Day Eight
Wombat becomes landscape.
A harlequin beetle inhabits the socket
of her eye, its iridescence a small sun.
Her clean-picked skull’s a smooth rock
weathering lichen-yellow.
Her backbone ridge bisects
the dully bleaching fur now
clumped in hummocks matching
paddock grass beyond the fence.
V: Week Eight
Her bone fragments like stone,
pebbled vertebrae scatter over fur
and under autumn leaves, returning.
A thing dropped
into a clear pool will draw fish
seeking food.
So Dante and Beatrice were received
by ambitious hungry lights
in the second circle of paradise.
And so it is in limpid waves behind
the shore-break at Bar Beach – turquoise, just like
a circle of heaven on holy days
as the sun strikes sheer
through sea’s restless face.
Lucent sand whiting hang unseen
and I am drawn to light from
their flanks. Mirror-winks
from distant wreck survivors.
My keen heart-jolt flashes back
in answer.
Between breaths
garlanded with streamers
I follow their turn,
salt-blurred among
the weed-manes.
1
My favorite saint tells me I complain too often about my soul’s shortcomings, I’m
grateful
2
for the dreams I remember, W— pushes apart my thighs and asks in Punjabi
when I’ll finish, nothing in this world more beautiful than its share of tenderness
3
your body is denied, O soul, you’re the sum of tragedies I’ve had to invent
4
to circumvent the ones we inhabit, I need you because I’m the only loss
5
I’m comfortable with, you’re either something I must overcome or something I’ve
already failed to, I can’t
6
so I don’t think of you in the present, I lack the imagination
7
to change, what my favorite saint says I believe, although the soul knows its
wretchedness and knows what we are is
8
wickedness, what a great favor the Lord does us by sending us this distress the soul
must be occupied with
9
when I say I’m too simple-minded to understand your mysteries, I want you to tell me
10
I’m being disingenuous, you manifest most frequently when I awake with a puffy face
and a hangover
11
in the morning every regret is that one opening through which
12
the heavens belch a riot of blond cherubs, I can only think of my life as a sequence of
crucial refusals, cracks
13
down a wine glass, a line of riot shields too ready for me to overlook, tomorrow a
rainbow so faint it won’t register in pictures, I browse through a list of victims to
practice my outrage, without feeling, the world you’ve made
14
shall give me the next simile that conveys with poetic precision how little I think of
myself: I look around to make sure someone’s overheard me.
we are not lovers, now
climbing a jagged mountain on weak joints
can one avoid twisted pain?
making an effort widens fault lines
climbing a jagged mountain on weak joints
I crack when not seen
making an effort widens fault lines
my problem is, I misunderstand unspoken words
I crack when not seen
a tongue of turbulent water makes you unreachable
my problem is, I misunderstand unspoken words
the desired channel is poetic
a tongue of turbulent water makes you unreachable
patterns repeat until one formulates change
the desired channel is poetic
it’s a matter of survival
patterns repeat, until one formulates change:
neuroplasticity enables me to breathe thin air
it’s a matter of survival
on compromised land, such independence is bittersweet
neuroplasticity enables me to breathe thin air:
one can avoid twisted pain
on compromised land, such independence is bittersweet
we are not lovers, now
1
Wheat horizons taper to roads
as rice to mountains hugs runoff.
The zabuton is just a pillow to sit on,
nothingness just the Eucharist unplugged.
I saw the boy slinking first
and the board was on it.
May his face shine upon you
so of course they smile.
Sitting is to be practiced for hours.
Hours. No quickies like the rosé takes its time.
The lotus does not its thing
leaving broken heaps in the public pond:
Let them ride a bit higher. We’re all bigger for it.
You know. Well she was thinking it.
Let the hope of it sudsing smudge the drag-a-little-bit-lower
along the let-them-have-it-their-way-or-no-way devices—
without which who knows? Recall a grandpa voice
dipping up and about for a wee hand up eh?
Friendliness passing through smothered in caramel.
Grab the bar at the back of the bike, not me.
Marriage lasts lifetimes of untimeliness
set up, more if you think it might pan out.
2
The wind refused to duck down and waves got off in flurries. They blessed and blamed
people, you and I, forgetting to leave the magnetic key on the counter on the way out.
It brings the homeland sensitivity on. Not pretty. Mr. and Ms. barely-high-in-perpetuity
bis principal de Peter par référence.
Who kids you-who? I mean,
wipe that off this in-side trailing standstill.
Several decades ago these ponytail blonds in slippers
took to no one. No one knocks and no one answers.
The hollow in the details and every turn.
Then letting the high wall climb in dividing me
and this or that other until the outfit disarmed
and bizarre incongruity turned to routine.
It’s a ride and smile that spurs oxen to scratch
in gusts, joy above stories, nudges,
an itch untouchable with respect to our ineffable cover.
The hand dresses wounds not to wake dormers and giggling rafters.
3
I have no right to dig up baggage for anyone,
least among whom would be me.
Musically a mind to let it out on me
for not hearing it my way, that love
it or find it weekends no worse, enough
at a loss, I mean, we’re all here, fingers,
so where is only a matter of branding, tarnishing
it imprints on us through its dig.
“Hey” I hear me saying, leaving the nonplussed
restroom smile off my face
the hey flattens still, but “how’s it going” picks up
motion, kinesthetic stop tower in the rainy season.
Deserts hold not a dandelion to it,
into the weak long sun of the northern summer.
absence feels nothing like cement
but waiting does – it holds you down
waiting bricks you in to waiting
as though it were time spent
a partnership, donated
unease is bought like lottery tickets
our spoils remain: trick of the past
dead-light, light-years away
the cold parade of dimming cores
that only reach our vision
when they finally choose to leave
stars die nothing like the suburbs do
but I’m learning how to lose
with dry-eyed devastation
two rows of fences sit
between the grass and me
perhaps it’s better labelled lawn
the man who clips the hedges waves
and I wonder if I’ve only
pretended to be kind
Before the end of the world we went
looking for more, on the shores of our
fated apocalypse. We dug bottomless
graves in devastated sand dunes and shoveled
more wet dirt, laid down in drawn out
motion, squinting at the sun with pirated
retinas and dirty fingernails. We sent
silent messages to the people beneath
the sea who lost us on purpose, for we
had gills but used them to suffocate Atargatis,
the sea goddess. On the final night, we found
an old piano on the pier, struck an irrevocable
tune at the full moon, staring blindly at its
waxed edges until it short-sighted us,
our heads submerged in a trash mountain
of more, crystal shaped viscous water
gleaming helplessly into fractal ice.
Together we buffer out on Willow
Rd brushing the gated residence.
There is a massive wasp on Ian’s
neck & it makes Steve remember
how he forgot to cc Ash in on the
hilarious picture of Willis colliding
with a Santa Fe on McEvoy. Also,
it reminds Steve of the O.J chase,
& anyway Ash probably wouldn’t
have cared that much, after all he
just recently suffered a divorce. an
almighty crash of holy matrimony.
A crash that not even the silver on
his chin could have prevented, &
so, Ash is under. & everywhere the
gore of power lines, & the gore of
Steve & his blessing. The gore of
his flower. & Steve starts like the
weather or telemarketing or whip-
lash. he wants to tag Tim in A pic
of them both taken at A Paul Kelly
concert, although Tim is reluctant
he considers himself to be above
social media & its mouth breathing
-Steve tags him anyway. Steve is
on Chester trying to catch up with
Ian as the wasp moves towards his
ear. Ian still hasn’t noticed the wasp
like god. The wasp has perched on
Ian’s ear like god. Steve is imminent
for the gosh. The gosh so full in his
forward facing eye. The gala of god
& goss. & Steve wants to FaceTime
Justin in on the wasp, it reminds him
of the O.J chase. & it reminds him of
the time a politician tripped over. &
Ian is descending the Lane as Steve
begins to record. All of us ordained
in his ache. on the cusp. on the cusp
of another gore & scourge. Staring at
the crash. like holiness. like porn.
(Directed by Michelangelo Frammartino 2010)
I hear the distant clanging of bells
and there are shadows of goats on my wall.
I wondered how they would come to me
but imagined them in the hills nuzzling me
as I laid back in the grass and closed my eyes.
My heart beats slowly and I feel
the sweet milk breath of a kid on my cheek.
The dog barks on the steps.
They will lay me in the crypt
cold stone on all sides.
My tree will be cut down
for the festival – a night of dancing.
Then men will come to saw
it into logs for charcoal.
My final thought
a wisp of smoke above old tiles.
Kiki Dee, Elton John Don’t go breaking my heart
It’s been thirty years plus since I last heard that song,
sitting in another car, another time a broiling January
eating soggy sandwiches with my dad his apprentice
We were half way through the job Kiki Dee, Elton John
Don’t go breaking my heart despite it all, the desperate battles
of a father and son, ideological to the marrow to the death
he’d sit there alongside me, in that damn car, listening
to music beyond his culture, beyond his generations, as foreign to him
as his political youth was to me far away, Austria a war
as he always said, I had no idea about Don’t go breaking my heart
Hot, soggy sandwiches Kiki Dee, he, I, twinned two sides
one coin, the currency of a job shared we worked as one
pass me the plane, the glue, hoist that end job done
I enjoyed building that kitchen with him, then with him
there, along the river each time I hear that song, I’m there again
driving home at the end of the day together in comradely silence
I’ve learnt to forgive him and sometimes I seek
his blessing still
closing stone
you and me in
apartment complex
blue dreaming
in the soft of night air
you nurse a fever
pale water
rushing to your head
of course there are
rules that we follow
hold raw flesh in one hand and
signal small fires to burn
around my body
i peruse
the dense grass
that keeps me hidden from the others
blood stain
thickens in the carpet
when i am not blind i notice
that your body lies
across the ground
your legs twisted into
shape of crossbow
hallway bends with your echo
i meet your mother in the morning
if you stare long enough
her skin will shade itself
into dark wine
the bedroom window is moonless
hear your whispers but i get you to
verify your identity through each
cup of tea smashed across the floor
you are swollen in my arms
to keep you there
i think of the colours
that wake inside of you
different winds
blowing
How vulnerable the body's archive
reproduction and memory
a banner juts out
a banner juts out
pure vector
two or three mediocre feelings
inscrutable
protesters and their certainty and their tough white crosses
what life is like
scabrous raked-over pine
witches hats in bleached or shaded settings
place attaching to symptoms–––is this bias?
is
is
movement like air it's how we live
*
clouds floating on windscreens
one-liners
I'm interested in that
no airflow
apology no airflow
Would you try again? Or give up? no airflow
Ask for help?
Give and give? no airflow
*
altered foliage
living memory, impression
realm
seems disinterested
across but never to: tentatively perceived
housing
aptitude––asset
the light eagling decades
END
palms
effort
it happened, you were there
landslip, roaming, a detour
*
the person of the place / everyone we knew /
abetting / from here / flat country
invigilation
of the public
bitumen
inland, scrubby, day day day
turn back
reports of an assailant
turn backs
selection criteria
fate
the wrong way
recycling
that memory
distractible
2000s
crime air
*
double dream spring
spring
warming
bump––bloom
as if you were born an angel
watcher
reader
this belief what life is like
temporary
something new is getting started; bureaucratic (unpeopled)
and so clean
(after Shirley Hazzard)
In the vicoli
the great heft
of Neapolitan washing
flaps above me,
driven by winds
that might have ancient names
or simply be cattivi,
sucked out and back
as if the streets themselves
are breathing.
Somewhere in the
closed chapel of Sansevero
lies the veiled Christ
in his wrappings
miraculously light
as this bleached and hoisted lot,
the afterbirth of his crown of thorns
discarded by his side.
A short walk on
and the markets are awash
with cloth
from god knows where.
Later in a darkened shop
—the Lavanderia—
a patient expat helps me explain
exactly what I need in a bottle
Aspete, signora, this one, right?
Aspete enunciated in the local
becomes asssh—pet,
a meaning so close, too close
for what it is
that really hangs above this town.
On purchase, I make a poor answer.
What did I wait for here
but the fine white
of not knowing
falling all over me.
1.
You once wrote the following in an essay in a book: ‘His poetry, ambivalent as a bathroom, acknowledges both the body’s pleasures and its incompetencies’. In response, a critic wrote that he only kind of knew what you meant.
You were talking about the poetry of John Forbes, who died of a heart attack in 1998. In his poem, ‘Ode to Tropical Skiing’, taking a bath is described as ‘a total fucking gas’.
2.
You think about the bathrooms you have encountered since writing that essay almost two decades ago. In particular, the bathrooms of hospitals. Helping your wife, almost unable to stand, wash herself. Outside a nurse asking if she can help, while the baby, helpless in a plastic cot, cries from hunger.
You think about the bathroom you made your way to after your bypass operation. Crossing your hands over your chest and applying pressure, like the nursing staff told you.
3.
Windowless bathrooms are the caves of modernity. In a hotel in Patagonia—a town where the wire fences were covered with scraps of rubbish, frantic in the wind—you find yourself in a room with a windowless bathroom.
All that space outside, ambiguously beautiful, and still nowhere to let the light in. On the second day, you change rooms.
4.
Every day, at home, you are in and out of the bathroom, taking in its fine abstractions while—utterly human—you shit, and wash, and brush your teeth.
You revel in the gaseous miracle of hot showers. The water, the fatty acids, the skin and hair—it all runs away. The bathroom window frames the outside world, which is simplified by steam and distance.
Lifted from his hospital bed for showering,
my husband swings at a perilous height.
Put me down! he cries like
some early movie heroine.
He has the King Kong of brain tumours:
Inoperable, Grade four
and is not the hero
anymore.
I
you could mount the monster, Eiffel-style
wrestle it to the asphalt
crack your cranium!
you know no restraint being
the bairn of your father, the moon of her
dark eyes;
fractured, you are flown into an elfdom
where elves of enchanted songs with
magicked fingers, would for the right price,
patch up puerile puissance;
in the meantime
they continue to river unremarked
the lethal blacktops veining this land
much menaced, the arterial spurts of votaries
commoners haplessly propitiating the
implacable gods of the roads we ply daily.
II
you shall be sheltered
having climbed into their hallowed rank
on bloodied steeples
mindless, of course, of the treacly cherry puddles
you would do a tap dance, really a victory dance
slipping, you would snap your neck!
why should you regret?!
what does it matter when your vulturine
friends, oligarchs in the chamber red, only
have to dig in the popular till
off you go then on medical charter
meanwhile
in the pens in your backyard
mothers expire in childbirth
babies post partum…
