Author: mascara

Misbah Khokhar was born in Karachi-Pakistan, with both European and Indian ancestry. She currently lives in Melbourne. She holds a Masters in Philosophy in Creative Writing from the University of Queensland. Her work appears in Australian Poetry Journal, Cordite, Contemporary Asian Australian Poets and Peril. She has been featured on ABC Radio’s Poetica, and has performed at the Queensland Poetry Festival. She was highly commended by Thomas Shapcott, Brownyn Lea and John Kinsella, and mentioned as a ‘standout’ in Lea’s essay ‘Australian Poetry Now’ (Poetry  Magazine, May 2016, Ed. Robert Adamson). Her debut collection Rooftops in Karachi is published with Vagabond deciBels3.
 
 
 
Rooftops in Karachi

My cousin has named all of his homing pigeons. He takes them in his soft hands and feeds them, but I have a feeling he could just as easily use those hands to snap their thin necks. My other cousin, who lives in the same house, goes around shooting cats. Since I arrived I have been putting out bowls of milk each night. Another cousin has an imaginary lover who she has introduced me to. She makes him out to be so real that I believe he is. But I can never seem to see him, which is not due to him being imaginary, but because he is shy and agile. She describes the way he kisses her, and the conversations they have, and to this day I remember his name. I know it’s been said that falconers feel their hearts soar with their falcons, but I don’t think it’s just a feeling.

 
 
I’m Going to Give You a Photograph

And when I take the photograph you will be saved. From what I don’t know. I’ve given you a photograph where you can store your grief: let it leave your face, ignite and fade. I’ve given you a photograph, your spectral resin will have no copies. It will be your canoptic surface, a scale of the immensity of your beauty. The flash will burn away your fate, will make you momentarily famous. I will give you a photograph that will be your golden fleece, a replica that answers you in time with a little betrayal.

Adam Aitken’s fourth major book is Eighth Habitation. In 2010 he was Distinguished Visiting Writer at the University of Hawai’i Manoa. His work has appeared in The Australian’s Review of Books, Southerly, Heat, Poetry (Chicago), Jacket, Cha, and Drunken Boat. He teaches Creative Writing at the University of Technology, Sydney.

Imperial Days

‘ a sort of

irksome Larkin-land’

– Pam Brown

My father’s imperial days, he remembers those, the better hours. To be born British. How coloured/ful was that? Spring 1961, a run on galoshes. Naipaul’s grumpy prose: and there is only one course: flight. Flight to the greater disorder, the final emptiness. Wot, Balham? Let us say that he’s forgotten the episode with the sleeping pills. I am glad my mother was no Sylvia Plath. He forgot the presents and gifts not reciprocated (a pair of black French knickers). He can’t recall the affairs and counter affairs, the improbable survival of beauty, art, the house which leaked and the stink of my sour nappies. The boredom of housebound employment and unemployment. My mother reminds me. The well-wishers arriving, drenched at the door during a bus strike. Her favourite story: an Australian novelist who couldn’t light the boiler in a miners strike. Stuffed it with too much newspaper she said. I’ve read about the white-out of 1963, the killer fog of ’64. My father’s letters and nightmares of the dead and the imminence of mutually assured destruction. The scarce tropical flowers and fresh fruit. The deadliness of the chill and the butcher’s queue for the last pot roast. I remember the sawdust on the floor. She remembers the drunken au pair with the French lover. Or was it the French au pair with the drunk lover? The cardigan poets who ate her out of house and home. The unending party. My father dreamt of a pottery in Wales. My mother refused. The boredom of 65, the plaster-eating mould. The summer of love, they missed it.

Brendan Ryan has had three collections of poetry published, the most recent being A Tight Circle, Whitmore Press, in 2008. His next collection of poetry, Travelling Through the Family, will be published by Hunter Publishers in 2012.

The killing work

The Hereford steer from wild country that charged our Valiant as we tried to shift it into a fresh paddock. Herd leader, cantankerous, fearless; a beast we couldn’t trust. Dents in the quarter panels, tongue swipes on the bumper. Pushed deeper into the paddock, we reverse away from the lowered horns, my father swearing, wrenching the steering wheel left, right, wheels skidding over cape weed. My brother and I in the back seat look away from what we know is not quite right. Not a time to speak with a beast on the loose, tearing through a barbed wire fence, flipping over, an apparent heart attack. We stare at the frothing mouth. My father silenced. The Hereford steer from wild country left on the track for the knackery truck.

scrubbed concrete floors
latex gloves, Muslim slaughtermen
rows of carcasses slide towards you

Returning from away, I ask about our pet cow Beefy – a cross-bred black dairy cow. The only cow we could hug, nuzzle, who would amble up to us, raise her head to sniff, rub against us. Not a productive milker, the type of cow who recognizes her own presence, unafraid of dogs, almost personable. You’re eating her, came the reply. Cut down, packed into plastic bags, steaks and ribs piled high in the Deep Freeze. A family has to eat. We ate steaks for breakfast, dinner and tea yet rarely butchered our own. Deaths in the paddock were acceptable, regrettable, something to rise from while talking around the red laminex table, those heifers that need to be ear-tagged.

Jen Crawford is a New Zealander living in Singapore. Her poetry collections include Bad Appendix (Titus Books), Napoleon Swings (Soapbox Press) and most recently, Pop Riveter, a set of factory poems available in limited edition from Pania Press. She teaches creative writing at Nanyang Technological University.

clear days giant sacra

this is for. it is not about or to, but I wish it was with. or it is with, about, for, to. it will be with. it will be with. it is not it is with.

with a walking, a donkey alongside. the gravel releases dust and the dust takes up the sun, dumping it across the valley. it is now 22 degrees and 6pm. the decline is fitted with small mauve wildflowers. we can look at them fined in the light and dark, narrow for pleasure. with that I have an excellent headache, from the tightening of the sun’s plates against the hills. while the dog and the donkey chase each other through the discards we stand here cantering our trebuchets, in arms. there’s nowhere to set the baby down. when I had this pain before I didn’t consider my hip considering a weight. when I saw the gravel I didn’t know you would be with me, to hold and cantering.

it will be. a strong lower back and rain or light as circular breathing. it will be with me your cream-covered book. a mouth full of simple exercises in shaded awnings. let no more than a lungful. need it be one after another, in and out, left and right? only without clarinets, and so far these continue, in will be with me. I am still walking. at times it has been said that the problem is exacerbated by the fact that even dictating physicians frequently have difficulty with plurals and that this pushes the burden straight back on the transcriptionist. but this is a curfew from when. in will be with me it will be with me, this alongside and with pains. this in between fingers and around fingers, the gravel light. this donkey I am conscious, and child.

Julie Chevalier’s short-story collection, Permission to Lie, was published by Spineless Wonders in 2011. Two poetry collections are forthcoming from Puncher & Wattmann:  linen tough as history, and Darger: his girls.

haunted girl lines my pocket with headlines

girl sends me off forever but to sing       novena sends me girl      sends me off forever        girl
sends me to hospital girl reveals the clinic           girl sends me spelling              didn’t send the
question       girls sends off clouds from the window      sends me off forever the ward where I
was washing a girl        but washing the floor          wanted girl sends me a blossom on a lunch
tray     girl sends dead bouquet in the rubbish    a pissing patient girl gave      newspapers send
me off girls      forever sang about girl      forever off girls but      moving girls send girls away
forever snow didn’t girl didn’t     sends me axe to shave      stopped        broke the food trolley
coming        girl sends me off

& dribbled catsup on his clean shirt       april 12, 1972

as soon as mr darger left for mass          yeah, four times a day           i sneaked into his room & grabbed the clothes off
his chair        really hot water & extra scoops of lux         out of the bendix & pegged to the line       david suggested the
goofy old coot take a bath       no siree      we brazillians don’t like to bathe in winter       april 12, hardly        of course
he’s not brazillian              i ironed the clothes dry while he was in the tub           the old man grimaced when we yelled
surprise happy birthday       just us lodgers & the landlords       in the yard          he bent down to pick up a rusty bottle
cap & could hardly stand up again        leaned on a chair & stared at the clouds           he fed hot dog sandwiches to the
landlord’s dog         the only thing he said was the good lord always claps thunder on my birthday           i wouldn’t say
grateful for the angel cake, no       three pieces       my seven minute icing      the new tube pan didn’t stick        the dog
followed him halfway up the stairs to his room

 Bella Li is a Melbourne poet and editor. Her poems have appeared in journals such as Meanjin, Cordite and Otoliths.

Voyage

Sullen days. The corsair moves mechanically on its hinges. Beneath our proscenium arch, wily ports ply their trade; measuring out the hours in skeletons and lampshades. The hold littered with props. Flat clouds drifting idly along the cardboard coast. (In the dawn they emerge, pale with grief.) I cannot remember biding time in the shallows with the air so steep. And the space behind the sun growing and growing, the stalls silent and empty on quiet nights. There were months when great shadows fell across the waves. And we moved, so it seemed, through lost oceans; past sunken islands from which the sounds of mourning stole. It is true that the flight was exhausting; my eyes reeked of distance. But when the blackness lifted, the horizon—beyond the dim circle of lights—remained featureless, unaltered. Now the shapes of our desires do not change but mimic, with each curtain fall, the appearance of a predictable set of stars. When evening transpires (at the appointed time, in the appointed place), the tide reverses; our loyal machines rise, assemble themselves across the deck. Wolf-like, sand-like. Waiting for that same, slow mirage: the familiar moon, hung from its lamprey sky. Swinging guilt.

E 44 10 N 33 15

In the year of the Hegira 622, driven from the city and exiled, I arrived at the mountains of the                . The journey was arduous. But I was “armed with the terrors of the sword”. And the movement of the heavenly bodies (the western side of the city entirely round) filled the sky. The city was entirely round; the inhabitants remarkable for their treachery. Concerning the treacherous mountains. Concerning the origin of the name  “                     ” (in the palace, there was a small                     ). Here the young prince—concealing his deformity with a veil—saw in the heavens the terrible                 rising. And “the phantom drew back his veil”. Massacred, according to custom, the vast number of the inhabitants. There followed “a grievous famine”. (In the eastern sky I saw the sun.) One morning, according to the vast number of oriental historians, the sun “a little after rising, completely lost its light”. To the great astonishment of the astronomers, this darkness (in the eastern palace persisting). Persisted until noon.

Michael Farrell has previously published prose poems in a raiders guide (Giramondo 2008). He coedited (with Jill Jones) Out of the Box: Contemporary Australian Gay and Lesbian Poets (Puncher and Wattmann 2009). His latest publication is thempark (Book Thug 2010). Contact: limecha@hotmail.com.

Contretemps

Red wine is certifiably itchy trying to get Linda to splash Sally  .  When Sally walks in wearing Brad  ’s   shirt  –  the one with the heather on it  .  What isn  ’  t a contretemps with those people  ?  It wasn  ’  t my fault I buried the drugs  ,  Sally said  , wilting the lettuce with hot oil  ,  Appalachian style  .  Glenda managed to join the tennis club  ,  only to find that Tony had left  ,  and had taken up croquet  –  or crochet  –  or Pinochet  –  or Pinocchio  –  or pinochle  –  or pineapple mastication for his health  .  Linda blamed everyone  .  Did you see Hal collapse at the piano  ,  with one of those pussy willow rib  –  ticklers on  ?  How much irony did you put in that drink  ?  he gasped  .  I am going to get me a slice of Brad  ’  s heather shirt  —  you see if I don  ’  t  !  A dog is here  ,  with a message for the cows  .  .  .  ‘  Drop dead  ’  ,  I think he said  ,  and when Angelo turned up shirtless on his motorbike  .  .  .  People started doing a bit of algebra in their front mashed potato  (  it was Halloween  ,  after all  )  .  (  Teenagers panting under the eaves and all that  .  )  They’ve got Supertramp playing on the green this year  ;  I don  ’  t know what respectable folkies see in  ‘ \ ’  ‘ / ’  them myself  .  They  ’  re no Yoko Onos are they  ?  Angelo turned the heat up by taking a hacksaw to the last baguette  –  as if there aren  ’  t kids to foster in his own village  –  or whatever they have up in those rainbows he lives in  .  The bridge fell on Hal  ’  s house last night  ,  but no one believed him so his grandmother was stuck there half the night  ,   with a girder holding her scalp in place  :  you could say  .  But how the bridge got there is anyone  ’  s business  .

Kirby Wright was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii. He is a graduate of Punahou School in Honolulu and the University of California at San Diego. He received his MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. Wright has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes and is a past recipient of the Ann Fields Poetry Prize, the Academy of American Poets Award, The Browning Society Award for Dramatic Monologue, and Arts Council Silicon Valley Fellowships in Poetry and The Novel. BEFORE THE CITY, his first book of poetry, took First Place at the 2003 San Diego Book Awards. Wright is also the author of the companion novels PUNAHOU BLUES and MOLOKA’I NUI AHINA, both set in Hawaii. He was a Visiting Writer at the 2009 International Writers Conference in Hong Kong, where he represented the Pacific Rim region of Hawaii and lectured with poet Gary Snyder. He was a Visiting Writer at the 2010 Martha’s Vineyard Writers Residency in Edgartown, Mass., and also the 2011 Artist in Residence at Milkwood International, Czech Republic.

Song for the Joy Luck Club Waitress of Kowloon Tong

“Sihk faahn,” you giggled, serving shrimp dim sum with congee porridge.  In the restaurant you read my fortune: “Yat geuk dap leung syun,” then scrawled name and email on a paper napkin.

You live off Festival Walk on the 60^th floor with your parents. “Lang do pow kang,” boasted your mother. We sit on a bench beside the light rail track. Smog unfurls over the mountain like a bone-white flag as your shiny black hair rivers through me. \ Lips taste of peanuts from dragon beard candy. I summon the boy in me hidden for decades. “Ngoh oi nei,” I stammer. Your eyes say you don’t believe.

I search for our future as my train passes.

Notes:

sihk faahn:  bon appetit

yat geuk dap leung syun:  1 foot on 2 boats (beware of cheating in a relationship)

lang do pow kang:  so pretty the mirror breaks

ngoh oi neih:  I love you

Jill Jones has published six full-length books of poetry, including Dark Bright Doors, which was shortlisted for the 2011 Kenneth Slessor Prize. She co-edited, with Michael Farrell,Out Of the Box: Contemporary Australian Gay and Lesbian Poets. She is a member of the J. M. Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice at the University of Adelaide.

Not Far

Is he gauging the distance between the station and the rain, or is it just another exchange? Like the packets these clouds will drop, but not here. I’m just as distant when he goes off smoking. Is there nothing left? Some of us manage to talk but not touch, speaking to air in all the common folly and gist inside us while a cop car circles the block. Whoever believes they’ll find what they’re looking for and how little it matters? Just as someone moves the hands of the clock and wishes maps were bigger. He’s back again, stabbing the phone, edgy keys in pocket. Each time gets more icy. I don’t imagine what he’s saying, please believe me, where’s the money, can’t come.

My excuses are extracted from this body by invisible operations of time that’s been bent, lungs and knapsacks, shallow breathing, all that dumb effort, just to go home again, and too much fun. I haven’t noticed the stones for days and leaves have got dirtier. Still, I never throw anything on the tracks or have crossed. I’m more careful than a tree even in winter, in places I can’t go outside of a time I only imagine but often recall. As so much exists to imagine. And so much gone, only a quarter forgotten. But we speak into the havens, lines of communiqué, blocks with holes. As we express little grunts, packages from the breast, gulping like winners but also spent, as we imagined it, bright and clear, but not far, not that far.

Another Mystery

It’s dawn and you still can’t get across. There’s a rowboat on the lake under moonlight. Behind you is a house full of suspects. Fate and the hangman are making arrangements. It’s good to have company and childish desires. The rain harbours feelings in the nervy night. I’m watching the incriminating clock. Who’s capable of love while we’re looking for motives? I’m guilty telling the truth, it’s what I know.

What’s this coldness?  What are these shawls? There are too many men in hats, while we’re blaming ourselves, seeing what we’re not supposed to know, or swallowing pills. Animals are without cash flows or alibis. Birds rise into the light, while you play with money you don’t have, floating another prospectus from the wharf. All the little girls are grown-ups. What has been overlooked? A strange kind of parsimony, “Set your children free!”

Ivy Ireland is a part-time cabaret performer, creative writing tutor, harpist, magician’s assistant, and PhD candidate. Ivy was awarded the 2007 Australian Young Poet Fellowship, and has had her poems published in various literary magazines and anthologies.  Ivy’s first solo poetry publication came out in 2007 and is entitled Incidental Complications.

L’escale Restaurant, Greenwich, CT

and it’s not like you have some other place to be.  tea, open fire place, open fire on some other space for avoidance.  it’s not like you are this ashes urn, portable picnic for later holocausts. or this charred log. you aren’t even the small burning before the final ash out.  most other people come here to support themselves in whatever horror seems most appropriate in whichever day dream. of theirs. this day. why not you.  this time. possibly they realise you won’t tip well even though lord knows desmond tutu ate here just last week. exclusivity should equal your absence.  it’s not as though anyone can shape this differently to how they were born to shape it.  there are no other tools, no contrasting fashions, no further instructions.  what does equality really signify in any case.  an afternoon of missing your morning of the subsequent day means little here.  sunlight so new and distant, almost reaching the sand inlet before these clouds join forces to obfuscate it out.

The Gaps

The text has holes in it, little keyholes for the sake of myth-making, and only the one star-gazing out can (im)possibly slip into them.  There is a crucial adjustment when “how can I exist?” turns into “how can I be alive in this?” Suddenly those roundabout machines we built to keep ourselves way out of critical theory converge in the centre, provoking and awakening an idea of onwards-and-upwards. This sensation is momentary.

Even if I say to you “you are this if this is life” it won’t matter and we will continue into cake at 3pm, our bodies refusing forever.  Even if I sew in to my own skin the text: I do not require anything to continue this remaining, the stitches will only remain until they don’t anymore.  And we’ll need them to stay there forever.

To perform becomes the central verb.  Like the encroaching of the sea, we now perform this abeyance as though this temporary pause to consider could be stitched into skin, as though that very same skin could push its way through all the gaps the text could (im)possibly hold.  As though, at the end, that same stinking vellum could be stretched over contingency like a disappearance-blanket.  As though we could then hide away under it, remain in this word: love.