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Cyril Wong reviews “Look Who’s Morphing” by Tom Cho

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Look Who’s Morphing

by Tom Cho

Giramondo
ISBN 978 192088 2549
www.giramondopublishing.com
181 pages

 

reviewed by CYRIL WONG

 
 
Reading all of Tom Cho’s stories in a single sitting proved to be an exhilarating experience that left me reconsidering past and broken familial relationships, the politics of identity-formations, as well as the insecurities and uncontrollable desires that rule both heterosexual and homosexual bodies alike.
 
Kafka crept into my mind the moment I entered the first story, “Dirty Dancing,” about a man who becomes a third-person observer that watches and comments as his old self engages in sex with another man; this observer-self is later coddled like a baby in the arms of his parents, but he swiftly manages to convince them of his adulthood by performing a “big raunchy dance number” at Melbourne airport, joined in by everyone around him.I am always surprised that not more writers execute surrealist fiction like this, with its Kafka-esque mis-directions and its exploration of the uncertainties of human communication. The authorial sense of freedom is mind-blowing. The form allows that wall between the structured mind and the broiling subconscious to go up in flames as one crazy plot twist leads to another. Theodor W. Adorno wrote that every sentence in Kafka’s writings seems to cry out, “Interpret me.” Unlike Kafka’s stories, however, which can be read allegorically or as absurdist fables (such as the famous one about a man who wakes up as a cockroach-like creature), Tom Cho hides little of himself behind his dazzlingly warped narrative threads, which includes how he once turned into a protocol droid which attacked the United Nations Headquarters, or how he was forced to become a Muppet on Jim Henson’s show.

 
The most psychologically revealing is the final story, “Cock Rock.” In this terrifically self-indulgent close to the book, the narrator turns into a giant rock musician who ends up being cock-worshipped by Lilliputian, Japanese fan-girls; at the heart of the story is an individual, existential complex about the writer’s unique attraction to both the world of fantasy and of the literal: “Am I drawn to the world of the literal because of its apparent certainties…Am I drawn to the world of fantasy for the very opposite reason…What would an experience that perfectly combines fantasy and the literal look like?”
 
There are those who will tell you that Kafka himself hid little about his own daddy issues in his work, but Cho’s fantastical forays into the Twilight Zone of the diasporic-Chinese-queer-male mind tell us readers straightaway that his bizarre tales are, without a doubt, autobiographical, even confessional. Cho is clearly fearless and has nothing to hide. As you enter one crazy piece of short fiction after another, you will come to recognise the writer’s deepest fears and desires. But if you are not interested in ever meeting someone like Tom Cho in your real life, you could be quite put off by what you will read about him in these pages. (In the author’s defence, I would be quick to argue that any aversion you might have in reading his book would necessarily make you a poorer soul; you must have been reading it through a homophobic, self-censoring lens or something.)
 
The particular insecurities of belonging to an immigrant culture in Australia and having to fit in come to the foreground particularly in such stories as “Suitmation” and “Look Who’s Morphing.” In the former, the narrator’s mother buys a “suit” that makes her look like Olivia-Newton John, while in the latter, title-tale, the Kafka-esque transformation gets weirder or nightmarishly contemporary: “I began to morph into a kind of infomercial cyborg – half-human, half-home-fitness-system.” It is all in the name of gaining re-imagined entry into hegemonic, cultural discourses of the western world. This also explains the recourse to popular films like The Exorcist and The Bodyguard, movies whose scenes the author steals and refashions in his own calmly psychotic style, inserting himself frequently as a significant character.
 
In “The Sound of Music,” the narrator, as the new Maria, develops a sexual, but also profoundly complicated, relationship with Captain von Trapp, in which he slowly becomes an isomorphic version of the latter. With Mother Superior’s blessing, Maria is encouraged to go to Switzerland to try living as someone more like the haughty Captain and he soon realises that “while our fantasies allow us the pleasure of imagining who we might be, can’t they also make us painfully conscious of who we currently are?” All this while Mother Superior is singing “Climb Every Mountain” in the background, of course. But the collection is grounded in the need to reconcile with loved ones and to celebrate the vulnerability of relationships, as when the narrator’s family all morph into The Cosby Show at one point, just so that they can get along.
 
We are never made to forget that not only are these stories about the author’s life, but that these stories also function as a means of catharsis, or a means of coming to terms with difficult truths about the delusions of the self, with internalised frustrations of being sexually deviant and diasporic. The imaginative ride for both author and reader is long, hard and nasty, but ultimately mutually beneficially. All of us learn that nothing should be taken seriously. And that being too concerned with our cultural identities can drive us mad. And a dark and cynical laughter, mingled with a little empathy, remains the only cure.

 

 

Meena Kandasamy

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Meena Kandasamy (b.1984) is a Chennai-based writer and activist. Her
debut poetry collection Touch, with a foreword by Kamala Das was
published in 2006 (Peacock Books, Mumbai). Two of her poems have won
first prizes in pan-Indian poetry contests. Her poetry has appeared in
several online and print magazines including The Little Magazine,
Indian Literature, Kavya Bharati, Carapace, QLRS. Her work has also
been featured in the Poetry International Web, and Other Voices
Poetry. She is presently writing her first novel titled, Gypsy Goddess. On the most poetic days, she is a Dalit activist and translator. She blogs at
http://meenu.wordpress.com

   

 
Straight Talk
 
adanga marupom, aththu meeruvom
thimiri ezhuvom, thirippi adippom
 
Everyone speaks of him.
 
Hands dancing in air
they gush about the power
of his words his flourishes
of rhetoric his direct approach
adanga marupom, aththu meeruvom
his raw reproach his felicity in
ferocious Tamil his three hours in
the sweltering heat rousing
angry young man rally speeches
that make men out of mice and
marauding wildcats out of men
fiery speeches that subvert and
overturn and unseat and revolt
thimiri ezhuvom, thirippi adippom
spontaneous speeches that unsettle
states and strongmen and sinister
systems of caste and speeches that
seek to settle scores delivered in
his voice that makes skyscrapers
fall to their knees
 
adanga marupom, aththu meeruvom
thimiri ezhuvom, thirippi adippom
 
He is the greatest orator
in our language today, they say.
 
I wonder how easily led people are.
 
Even I loved his speeches best,
until, one day, seven years ago,
I fell in love with the many registers of his silences.
 
                                                                                                                                                                                                                             

 

Mrs. Sunshine
 
She left him without warning.
 
She left him because she didn’t fancy
the way he flaunted his fire, his fist
and his million blistering fingers
that were always in heat.
 
So, she left him with her shadow
as acting spouse, for keeping house.
 
He went wild.
 
He went looking for his absconding
angel of tears and caustic tongue, his
angel of bleeding bare bones, his angel
of monthly mood swings. He went
looking over salt seas that shunned
his shine, over cities with skyscrapers
that stared into his eyes and over
obscure lands that chose to look away. 
 
Lovesick, he lost his fiery temper,
his high temperature, his feverish fondness
for flames and furnaces and he became
a man of moderation. Running behind
a woman on the run, he became
a master of masquerade.
 
He turned romantic. He longed 
for the soiled scents of rain
for the solitary shade of trees
for mist that hung heavy like his heart.
He squandered his insufferable splendor.
He turned black. He turned dark.
 
She returned in a twilight drizzle
and offered a truce before he made
the final offering of himself. She said:
 
     When the world has closed its eyes
     And as we become the one beast
     With two backs, you can
     Lay your lights in me.
    
She also whispered:
 
     For old times sake,
     I will hallucinate
     your halos, your holiness.

 

 

Felix Cheong

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Felix Cheong was the recipient of the National Arts Council’s Young Artist of the Year for Literature Award in 2000. He has published three books of poetry, Temptation and Other Poems (1998), I Watch the Stars Go Out (1999) and Broken by the Rain (2003), which was short-listed for the 2004 Singapore Literature Prize. Sudden in Youth: New and Selected Poems will be published in 2009. Felix edited Idea to Ideal: 12 Singapore Poets on the Writing of Their Poetry (2004).  A Bachelor of Arts (honours) graduate from the National University of Singapore, Felix completed his Master of Philosophy in Creative Writing at the University of Queensland in 2002. He is currently a freelance writer and an adjunct lecturer at LASALLE College of the Arts, Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts and Temasek Polytechnic.


 

In Praise of Sloth

 

Not writing is a pain

five years in the making,

a knot you choose not

to untie, pact of convenience

with time, vow of silence,

itch at your back, the back

of your voice you can’t reach,

neither pen nor stick.

 

But how it grows, terrible

territory; you flog dead

lines, sub-verse, start

false and stutter, follow

the lead as it sinks, suspect

animation, play dumb, downplay,

punctuate yourself with commas,

poems in coma, this lull, dull period

when you have nothing to say,

nothing to say it with.

 

For not writing is a virtue, let

sleeping words lie,

an implosion of sloth

before you find the gift.

 

 

 

Before Reality Shows

It will be, will it to be,

faith that a wall

is your window to morning,

glory, gilt-mounted, coughing out

the sun, sheen and shine

as if no closure, never

foreclosure. Imagine, yes, hold

it together with words or gods,

that into the distance,

doors lead you on,

corridors steep as the steps

you can carry on your feet,

before dead-ends chase you down,

nail your head to your heart,

seal them blinding shut.

 

There are no alternatives. Nothing

else will alter what is native

inside you: A box

where not even silence escapes. 

 

 

 

Night Calls

 

Soon, your day will

pass, no matter how fast,

vast, furious, light will run

itself out, like a boy

given legs for a field

or a man, women for a song.

 

It’ll always be too soon,

like that last kiss,

the lasting kiss, a kiss at last,

at the mercy of needing

too much, saying too little.

 

When dark matters, rises, steadies

itself for the kill,

you’ll not be this weak again

but complete, completed,

taken out of circulation

and buried among stars,

want for nothing.

 

Cyril Wong reviews “The Kingsbury Tales” by Ouyang Yu

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The Kingsbury Tales

By Ouyang Yu
Brandl and Schlesinger
ISBN 978-1-876040-82-6
 
Reviewed by CYRIL WONG

 

In The Kingsbury Tales, Ouyang Yu has decided that he has written a novel, instead of just a collection of poems. Although there is no overarching, dramatic narrative beyond the physical and emotional transitions the poet makes between Australia, China, and even Singapore, Yu’s latest verse volume is arguably a novel in the Bakhtinian sense. Russian critic Mikhail Bakhtin has made a general point about poems for when they are potentially novelised: “They become…dialogised, permeated with laughter, irony, humour, elements of self-parody and finally…the novel inserts into these other genres an indeterminacy, a certain semantic openendedness, a living contact with unfinished, still-evolving contemporary reality.” Bakhtin has emphasised that a novel is dialogical by being constituted by various autonomous discourses in respect to which the author takes the position of an interlocutor.

 

This is certainly the case here, in which Yu’s book consists of an imagined, or remembered, smorgasbord of characters held together by the poet’s critical and poetic imagination. If one is searching for narratives in these poems, they can be found in the established, historical ones that intersect across the poet’s diasporic position as a Chinese writer living in Australia (Kingsbury, Victoria, to be exact.) The Kingsbury Tales has irony and humour, but they are subsumed under the long shadow of melancholy (life, Yu writes in the book’s closing poem, is, for an old man, “not worth living / Better never born”.) This melancholy permeates the poems as they struggle to expose the often discomfiting “openendedness” of historical discourses and contemporary multiculturalism (an openendedness that also exists in the definition of genres like the novel form, which Yu unabashedly exploits for his purposes here). Divided into general sections such as Historical Tales, Women’s Tales, Migrants’ Tales, Singapore Tales etc., the poems within them care less about offering an aesthetic thrill than about conveying a sense of jarring displacement or tragedy that stems from the poet or his characters being unable to make sense of the world.

 

From a poem like “An Aboriginal Tale,” in which the poet parallels the same racism faced by both an Aboriginal person and a Chinese woman, to a poem like “Shanghai Women” about how a Shanghainese woman, who is “living a not very interesting Australian life,” longs to return to China with the ashes of her dead husband, Yu starkly brings to our attention the real life stories and microscopic incidents that go wrongfully unnoticed by larger narratives about society. The poet’s own life is put under scrutiny too. In “The Palm Reader’s Tale,” the palm reader takes the poet’s hand and reads him as a man “not content with doing one thing only” and notes that whatever he does, “there is always something there that tries to frustrate it or him.” Restlessness and frustration are the fuel that drives these poems to form a picture of what John Kinsella has described, in his preface, as “a paranoid zone wrestling with its own exclusion and belonging.” What is excluded are the oppressive ideologues according to which our lives are forcibly aligned, while what belongs in the picture, or Yu’s poetic zone, is the indeterminacy and fragmented nature of dissonant, cultural units that the poet, and other diasporic figures like the poet, are forced to hold together within the conflicted spaces of their own self-identification.

 

If language is the entryway into a different culture, then it is also how we most evidently manifest our inability to ever assimilate ourselves. In “New Accents,” the character, “C from Canton,” mispronounces the word “English” as “Anguish,” indicating the pain that comes from being thrown into a culture that one often remains paradoxically excluded from. It is a paradox that a poet like Yu is struggling to resolve, and also—hence offering another paradox—not resolve, at the same time. On one hand, the poet aims to re-imagine a new linguistic space for cultural disparities, yet it is a space of more conflict than harmony, more chaos and shit than the shaking of hands. After the poem, “Holding Up The Candle,” where the poet recounts a story in which an officer accidentally writes ju zhou (raise the candle) in a letter to a friend, turning this innocuous phrase into a sentimental call for courage to illuminate dark times, comes the incongruous poem, “Bowel Movements, A Tale.” The opening of bowels is a recurring image throughout the book. In the latter poem, the poet contemplates on how even falling snow is like shit issuing from the sky’s anus.

 

This is a poetry that is deliberately full of it. The poet makes a convincing case: history is full of stifling delusions of grandeur and hypocrisy—full of shit, and so is culture. It is this shit that we have to deal with whenever we find ourselves in the position of being rudely and unsympathetically marginalised within the context of a new place and language. The idea that the world would be a much better and harmonious place if different races would simply sleep with each other, is a point that Yu humorously, and not un-seriously, makes in the poem “The Mix,” where he writes, “This racial mix, which, in typical Ouyang speak, is the great Fuck.” From shit to plain fucking, the poet ends the book with a section of No Tales (obscenity shifts to a critical discussion of nothingness), in which Yu writes, in “This No Thing, A No Tale,” “This no thing, the notion of a no / In the heart of us…Years in denial, self denial, soul denial…Constituting the smallest part of this nation this notion / The biggest part of this no thing”. The “no” becomes not just the “no” of denial, a repressive denial of the inconsistencies of cultural identities, but also the “no” that signals, within the poems, the emptiness of such discourses that we have to simultaneously accept and deny in order to play our roles in the socio-cultural game of history, as well as stay sane, keeping our heads and souls above the excrement of it all.

 

 

Kristin Hannaford reviews “A Shrine to Lata Mangeshkar” by Kerry Leves

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A Shrine to Lata Mangeshkar

By Kerry Leves

Puncher & Wattmann
ISBN 0-9752405-4-4

Glebe, 2008
Order Copies from http://www.puncherandwattmann.com

 

Reviewed by KRISTIN HANNAFORD


Sometimes you have a book that travels with you.  A collection of poems which has secreted itself into a handbag or suitcase, a book you grab and keep chancing upon like a forgotten bus ticket floating at the bottom of a purse or wallet.  Kerry Leves’s A Shrine to Lata Mangeshkar has been my bus ticket for the past eight months. It has travelled to Sydney with me, to Brisbane; it has ferried back and forth to work and made appearances at lunch hours patiently offering up delicious snippets of India.

Carrying the book in the backseat of a Brisbane taxi I ask my Indian taxi driver if he is familiar with Lata Mangeshkar; he seamlessly negotiates city streets while enthusing over her beautiful voice.  Lata Mangeshkar is also known as the Nightingale of India.  Her pre-recorded voice can be heard in thousands of Indian films as female actors dance and sing through their lip-synced Bollywood musical extravaganzas. The taxi driver and I discuss his home town of Mumbai and the hugely successful Bollywood film industry. He states very seriously about his intentions on returning home to India, ‘God wants me to be a Taxi Driver for a while and then I will be an actor!’

So it seems that as I dip in and out of this collection, despite the fact that I have never been to India, that the connections between my world here in Australia and those of India are many.  A Shrine to Lata Mangeshkar takes place, for this reader, in that wider ‘mythic’ India; the rich tapestry of Hindu gods and temples imbued with colour, energy and noise of people and the streets. The collection opens with ‘Mumbai’, a beautiful poem simply focussing on the sights and sounds of the ‘pearl-dust’ dawn in the city which carries the title line,

            There ought to be a shrine

 

            to Lata Mangeshkar,

            her honeysuckle tones,

           

& all the faces

            she has ever sung.

            (12) “Mumbai”

 

‘Mumbai’ delivers an Indian street symphony. The couplets in the poem serve to slow down the reader, we survey the city, listen to the rising cacophony of street sounds, which quieten to silent prayers ‘& the god in a knee-high roadside shrine/ is only colour loud; is quiet’ . In the final couplets the Mumbai crescendo peaks with the arrival of the day,

           

            Breakfast puris tan

            in oil that seethes;

 

            blue flames hiss, a kettle blackens –

            welcome! Welcome to Mumbai!

            (12) “Mumbai”

 

It’s hard to imagine living in a city as large as Mumbai, with close to nineteen million people, its competing for the spot of the world’s most populous city. Leves’s sensory exploration of the city is delightful and his attention to imagery works well throughout the book, lines such as ‘The sun/churns the river.’(Himachal morning) and

                       

late 20th century fireflies

swarm

                        & spin the darkness

like a raksha’s eyes

 

Rough sprits guard this valley

                        where town lights

networked close along the river

                        form a yoni –

 

coincidentally

                        map a Goddess part

on Shiva’s inky carbon –

(15) “Night piece, Himachal’

 

suggest a sensitivity and awareness of the intimate connections between people, environment and spirituality in India as the poet observes the landscape at the foothills of the Himalayas.

 

The collection is prefaced with a quote from Indian Poet Keki N. Daruwalla, ‘In an alien land, language itself turns brown and half-caste’, which I believe gestures towards the difficulty of processing and translating experiences of ‘elsewhere’ into language, into poems. The writing inherently becomes happily muddied, infused with words, experiences and traces of the ‘alien land’, both shaken up by the experience and transformed. In an effort to guide those readers who are less au fait with Indian phrases and concepts, like myself, Leves has included a meaty glossary at the back of the book.

It appears Leves first began this collection in the 1980s (or at least this is where some of the poems were conceived) when he travelled in India with well-known Australian poet Vicki Viidikas. Viidikas is included in the oft-quoted ‘Generation of ‘68’ which includes poets such as Robert Adamson, John Forbes, Ken Bolton and John Tranter; poets active and engaged in the inner city Sydney poetry scene in the late 60s and 70s. Many accounts exist detailing the poetry and personalities of this time; Ken Bolton’s recollections of this time in Sydney are particularly interesting. Viidikas died in 1998 and Leves dedicates this collection to her.  Viidikas’ presence in these poems is large; in many ways she appears in these poems as Leves’ muse, visions of her appear as moments of enlightenment or struggle, in Kali:

            a golden doll a crazy-clock but animated using

            all her wicked tickling wit to tick him off

            stick-limbed a cloud of incense

            sandalwood the scent                        she is

translucent like and autumn leaf

(37) “Kali”

 

This poem explore the concepts of the Hindu Goddess Kali as seductive and beguiling, a woman capable of change and cruelty, the reader gets a sense of Viidikas’ ‘slavic cheekbones vast dark eyes/ with sly dimensions swim for his subconscious striking out’ and her charged and unsettled emotional life. The narrator is her ‘Magister Ludi’ (Leves’s witty reference to the Hermann Hesse novel of the same name) and the reader begins to glimpse here the complexity of the relationship – is the poet suggesting he is, like Joseph Knecht in Hesse’s novel,  a servant  or slave? Or is she/he a willing ‘intellectual’ participant playing a complex game of thoughts?  I’m happy to be left in the dark here, because this is one of those times when complex layers of meaning joyfully saturate and obscure the ordinary. As Kali draws to a close the narrator knows he is ‘second’ in this relationship, second in love, second to her demands and ideals:

            he sometimes fights their way onto trains and buses

            can discuss the gods & God

till the candle’s low

till the flame’s engulfed

& through all this

she clarifies

                        that it’s not enough

no never enough (for her)

 

for him it’s close to perfect

(40) “Kali”

 

Viidikas also wrote a collection of poems from her time in India called ’India Ink.’ I’m sure it would make interesting reading alongside Leves’s work; a kind of dialogue of poems and experiences of India.

 

Some of the poems in this collection predictably fall into the postcard poem basket, providing glimpses and observations rather than sustained insight, but I believe this is part of the appeal of a collection of travel poems – sometimes the view from the street or out the window is enough.  There are, however, many interesting sequences of poems. I particularly enjoyed ‘Monkey Balconies’ (pp.60-67) which explores the journey to Shimla, the old summer capital of the British Raj when India was under English rule. Images define the mismatch of ‘English swings, fields, stiles’ and the ‘paan stained bathroom’.  The narrator experiences his ultimate severance from the landscape, traces his place in this strange misted vision of England and India:

                       

So this is seeing the world

            without Hindustani: a tartan shawl

            bundles my bones together.

            Into & out of the mist, I’m a walking

            shadow of history. Must be the altitude –

            not even drugs can earth me.

 

The sequence ends with ‘Celestials’, the poet negotiating Jakko Hill, the shrine of Hanuman the monkey God.  Here the monkeys rule. Aggressive and ‘ungodly animals’, any reader familiar with experiences of monkeys and temples (or for that matter any place where the native animals have been encouraged to seize food) will get a smile out of Leves’s clever depiction of a tug of war between the narrator and a monkey over that aforementioned ‘tartan shawl’. Comic images ‘descending into Monkey Hell’ and of a tireless priest ‘flailing a knotted club/ in some karmic fandango’ are memorable and witty.

 

A Shrine to Lata Mangeshkar is Kerry Leves’s long awaited fourth collection of poems, following Green (SeaCruise, 1978); Territorial (AnT Studios, 1997) and the chapbook Water roars, illusions burn (Vagabond, 2002).  For the armchair traveller or India enthusiast,  A Shrine to Lata Mangeshkar is certainly well worth a read. The collection reflects Leves’s longevity as one of Sydney’s most interesting poets.

 

Desh Balasubramaniam

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Desh Balasubramaniam is a young poet. He was born in Sri Lanka and grew up in both the war torn North & Eastern provinces. He fled to New Zealand at the age of thirteen with his family on humanitarian asylum. He is a qualified barrister & solicitor of High Court of New Zealand. He has spent number of years travelling on shoestring budgets around the world with the strong desire to understand the world and his place in it. His first return to Sri Lanka in 2005 had further enhanced his passion in writing and various forms of art. He describes his writing as “a voice for the unheard”. His work has appeared in Blue Giraffe and Sunday Times (Sri Lanka) Online. He is currently working on his first poetry collection.  

 

Expressionists

Woods behind the yard
              a month-old calf cries into deep night
Dogs in wolves’ mask
yowl in cemeteries of the streets
Voices, voices––that scream
              fade as another gun fires
Nail the windows, slam dark the doors
Hide within the cracks
              next to centipede stings
Last night’s blood in the throat
taste of cold feet to the heels
A game of hide (without seek)
              as death nears the bend
Neighbour’s misery (a school teacher)
baton across his learned temple
              the rusting knee caps
His wife’s sari on the floor
––scream of silence amble
Shadows beneath the door-split
            hunting dogs––their prey
Will you fight for freedom?
Will you rather pray for life?
              (a lifeless life)
They came and they came
              to our homes lit by kerosene lamps
dressed in green, a metal face
              to liberate us (they said)
Armed with a paint brush that fired
the island’s expressionists they screamed
Painted our homes with bullets, and
a trail of blood they walked

 

Waiting for Freedom

Down a blurred alley off Serangoon Road
in view of Perumal temple
five-headed bells ring
             waking the sleepless sleep
Familiarity within unfamiliar corners
             strangers begin to lose their shadows

Courtesy of a spaceless room––windowless
shoulder to shoulder, the six of us
Staring at the dim of ceiling
waiting for words
             madam from the mansion

Through the racket
            rough lovemaking from the neighbouring room
father confirms: “freedom awaits in a new land
our futures”
             ––away from the death knot of civil war
common obituaries
the unforgiving sharpness of a knife
She screamed finale––a long aaahh!
              a moment of freedom felt by all

Dressed with a thin noose
the interview at High Commission
Raised to answer every question
in little known language of English
Yes madam, even though it ought to be no at times
she smiled at my village-school politeness

Father forced to turn home
five unguarded left on our own
              ––the bells kept their heightened blare
Months passed, so did my case of puberty
Sympathetic strings of sitar
our story in a melodious eulogy
Unable to meet the rent
sought asylum from the unknown
Perumal stood his solitary stance
unheard our pleas

Living on milo bungkus
and daily dollar of curry puffs
Counting the number of passing cars
drunken men who sing their misery on Indian streets
wiping the tears of mother
(I had grown––
faster than the roaming clocks)

Month after month
under the lowering opaque ceiling
we waited––shoulder to shoulder
for a letter of freedom

Month after month
under the lowering opaque ceiling
we waited––shoulder to shoulder
for a letter of freedom.

 

On My Way To Asylum

script of my memoirs, I find
on unlined pages
rear of a novel I read years ago
written with blood of my own
photographs in black & white and burnt edges
smell of ash
            brittle memory of a life buried beneath
an affair with question
never leaves the bed
mind hangs on a barbwire fence
commas turned to colons
            showing clear breaks
story with a struggle for breath
born on a tear of Indian ocean
without a nation for some years
covering the scars with a silent pair of eyes
crawling on bare knees, with
broken body of words and a weightless bag
I arrive here in the cold
            with and without will
searching a new beginning
my drawn hand to greet the horizon

 

 

Emma Carmody

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Emma Carmody is working toward her PhD in creative writing and French at the University of Adelaide. Prior to commencing her doctoral project, she worked as an environmental lawyer in Sydney. She has also worked in a volunteer capacity with several NGOs that provide legal advice and support to asylum seekers. Her poetry, prose and translations have appeared in Australian and foreign journals, including the Australian Book Review and New Translations. She currently lives in the South of France.  

 

 

 

 

Divinité Khmère, Musée Guimet   

 

Flank entombed,  

A thew of root around her

Goddess waist,

 

She meditates on centuries,

Incubates the temple’s

Holocaust.   

 

There is no modesty

In the jungle:

Insects breed

 

Between her virgin thighs,

 

Monkeys take their pleasure

On her naked breasts,

And in a flush of humid green

 

Bamboo shoots

Quake about her feet 

Like nerve endings of the understory.  

 

What memories she must hold

Of another world,

Where each dawn was guarded

 

By the season’s alms, humble

On the altar,

The droning of the sutras –   

 

Her divine core.

 

Being so vital,

So sovereign to the shrine, 

She offered up her wisdom

 

Until suddenly,

Her naked arms severed,

The empire slain:

 

Rebirth in the wild.

 

  

The Ento(M)-uscian

 

Piano player. Hands agonised into
Deftness,
 
By ten you’d almost
Charmed an octave
 
(While I was chasing insects
With a salvaged net,
 
Suckling the nectar out of
Wildflowers). In a
 
Pool of light
You press needles
Into Apollo.
 
You explain:
The wings are clad
In scales of dye,
 
I observe:
The proboscis quavering
Beneath your weight.
 
Another day,
We listen to Liszt’s études in the kitchen;
You palpate the tune
Across my rib cage.
 
You tell me:
My right hand’s too stiff
For these studies
 
As I disrobe grapefruits for the salad,
Divest the flesh
Of seeds and rind.
 
In summer, we drive South.
 
In valleys that antler
Seaward,
Through fists of granite
And nimble scrub,
 
You hunt Lepidoptera,
 
Circling flowers in adagio,
 
Conquering with ease
 
The woman in the tent –
Your fragile prey.
 
                         Though there was
 
An evening in Cassis
When the cicadas,
Corralling the earth to their staccato
Spared a moth its genus
   
And I bunched
Wild herbs
Up in specimen jars marked
 

Parnassius Apollo, Polyommatus Eros.

 

The Shore Line 

 

Alone on the beach

with the lovely slaughter of evening’s

thrust: puffer fish, a slick of gull,

crushed shells. Between

open ocean and smaller things

I walk North, through fits of rain.

You stay inside.

 

Three urchins on my mantel now,

vestigial spines worn but keen. 

 

We grieved our loss on the phone last

week: the garden’s thriving, your brother’s fine,

may I visit? Such responsibility for

chance words, barely meant –

 

such tenderness, these killing fields

at lowest tide.

 

 

 

Justin Lowe

Written by mascara on . Posted in Poetry.

Justin Lowe was born in Sydney but spent large portions of his early childhood on the Spanish island of Minorca with his younger sister and artist mother. Completing his schooling back in Sydney, Justin gained a BA in the Central West of NSW and then spent several years in Europe working odd jobs and honing his skills as a writer. On returning again to Sydney, Justin settled down with his partner in what was then a fairly crusty Newtown teeming with disparate souls where through the course of the 1990’s he published more and more of his poetry and collaborated with some of Sydney’s finest songwriters such as Tim Freedman of The Whitlams and Bow Campbell of Front End Loader and The Impossibles, as well as editing seminal poetry mag Homebrew and releasing two collections, From Church to Alice (1996) and Try Laughter (2000). In 2001 Justin moved to the Blue Mountains west of Sydney and has since published one more poetry collection (Glass Poems, 2006) and two verse novels (The Great Big Show, 2007 and Magellenica, 2008).

 

Will Oldham

 

her nape

smells of the earth

where I will hum my one, long note

 

in the powdery dawn

when the crocuses are budding

and the quicksilver in their irises

 

speak of poor choices

a fatal misreading of the times

though if there are limits

 

to the limitless

they are drowned

in the banquet trill of the magpie

 

and she turns

so slowly, anyhow

she barely troubles the creases

 

where I have let my hand travel

like God’s cold eye

along the ragged exodus

 

feeling out the green, ticklish spots

the gentle frost that never lifts

the hmmmm of the little girl stuck in her throat

 

and the question always asked

when the end is slowly dawning on us

crisp and golden in the lattices

 

baby, what time is it?

 

 

Janis

hers is the beauty
old prophets once exhorted
too long in the desert
pining for that cold touch

 

what some call purity

others a blade

the idiot wind

how many times how many times

 

but I am already

turning this poem on its head

for she is not one of those

ice maidens of sepia

 

the fog light tavernas

of the mud-caked generations, the ashen-faced:

the gods have not been kind to her

but nor have they played their usual games

 

she had a good man

a good, sweet, honest man

and he stuck by her

the Lord alone knows why

 

for she sang of him

but never to him

sang so long and loud of him

that all the nameless suddenly had a name

 

all the faceless had a face
all the silent stirred like crumpled paper
while all the blameless suddenly confessed
and all the heartless wept
 
and this good man drowned lonely in her throat

 

 

 

Patti Smith                                                                                                          
 

his was the first instinct
to protect his own
and so he did
 
and so
the pinched face stares up
and the pinched little fingers scratch at the sun
 
and the line crackles
and I am back there as he cooks
buttering over the thousand silences
 
so I assume
she cackles as at a name
she does not like
 
water with oil
the absence of hesitancy
is the absence of humour
 
a dry cackle
some ancient enmity
neither has the time to explain
 
or perhaps because
he clutches his pink little fingers
at the myriad whispers, the opaque face
 
high strings
and a lonesome baritone
and every river gurgling down to the sea
 
the salty death in his tiny mouth
where the gulls hover hungry
and the sun feasts on the eyes of everything

 

 

Morrissey

 

 

if by a gypsy you mean

a man skirting the hearth light

the spastic dance of the tv

 

then I am your gypsy

 

I have a home, Johnny

but it is not of this world

whisper of traffic on a rainy Sunday

 

I am that hunch you see

on the stone plinth in the trench coat

with the eyes of tarnished copper

 

the stiletto wind on Canal street

the echo of your guitar in the old farriers

like a tap dripping steel in the old farriers

 

I hardly know you

why do I bother trying

to cut this cloth for you?

 

tapping away on that fretboard

like the ghost of a factory child

humming my heart and soul over and over

 

time is not our currency –

is that what you’re trying to tell me?

live short and punchy, Steven

 

make shapes of their hours

 

 

Ana Blandiana translations by Daria Florea

Written by mascara on . Posted in Featured Poet.

Daria Florea was born in Romania in 1964. She is an enthusiastic single parent and short story writer currently undertaking her post graduate studies at the University of Newcastle, Australia. After fleeing the communist dictatorship in her home country and residing in Australia for almost 20 years, she has rekindled a professional interest in the literary and political themes in Ana Blandiana’s poetry.

 
Hibernare

Nu-i asculta pe fraþii mei, ei dorm,
Ei nu-nþeleg cuvintele care le strigã,
În timp ce urlã ca niºte fiare aprobatoare
Sufletul lor viseazã stupi de albine
ªi înot în seminþe.

Nu îi urî pe fraþii mei, ei dorm,
S-au învelit în somn ca într-o blanã de urs,
Care-i pãstreazã cruntã ºi apãsãtoare în viaþã,
În mijlocul frigului fãrã-nþeles
ªi fãrã sfârºit.

Nu-i judeca pe fraþii mei, ei dorm,
Rar câte unul este trimis în trezire
ªi, dacã nu se întoarce, e semn c-a pierit,
Cã încã e noapte ºi frig
ªi somnul continuã.

Nu îi uita pe fraþii mei, ei dorm
ªi-n somn se înmulþesc ºi cresc copii

Care-ºi închipuie cã viaþa e somn ºi, nerãbdãtori,
Abia aºteaptã sã se trezeascã
În moarte.
 
Hibernation
 
Don’t listen to my brothers, they sleep.
Not understanding their own shouted words,
While they scream like approving wild beasts
Their soul dreams beehives
And they swim in seeds.
 
Don’t hate my brothers, they sleep.
Wrapped in sleep like in a bear rug,
Preserving them savage and oppressed in life,
In the middle of the senseless,
Endless cold.
 
Don’t judge my brothers, they sleep.
Seldom one is sent off into the awakening
And if he does not return, it’s a vanishing sign,
For it is still night and cold,
And the sleep continuous.
 
Don’t forget my brothers, they sleep
In their sleep multiplying and caring for children.
They believe that life is sleep and, impatiently,
Can hardly wait for their awakening
In death.

 

 

Pastel

Þara mea pãrãsitã de fructe,
Pãrãsitã de frunze.
Pãrãsitã de strugurii
Emigraþi prevãzãtori în vin,
Þara mea trãdatã de pãsãrile
Rostogolite în grabã
Pe cerul mirat ºi încã senin,

Veºnic împãcatã,
Mirosind a ierburi
Care-ºi dau sfârºitu-n soarele domol,
Credincioºi pãianjeni
Þes pânzeturi albe
Ca sã bandajeze
Locul frunzei, gol.

Noaptea stele coapte-þi
Fermenteazã cerul,
Vântul curge ziua
Tare ºi-amãrui,
Orele-þi mãsoarã
Nucile cãzând
ªi te lumineazã
Cuviincios gutui.
Pastel
 
My country deprived of fruit,
Abandoned by leaves.
Abandoned by the grapes
Migrated prudently in wine,
My country betrayed by the birds
Somersaulted in haste
In the wondering yet still clear sky,
 
Forever content,
Smelling of grasses
Which pass away in the melting sun,
Faithful spiders
Weaving white webs
To bind up
The place of leaf, empty.
 
At night baked stars
Ferment your sky,
The wind flows the day
Strong and bitter,
The hours measure your
Walnuts falling
And light you
Quinces decently.

 

 

Eu cred

Eu cred cã suntem un popor vegetal,
De unde altfel liniºtea
În care aºteptãm desfrunzirea?
De unde curajul
De-a ne da drumul pe toboganul somnului
Pânã aproape de moarte,
Cu siguranþa
Cã vom mai fi în stare sã ne naºtem
Din nou?
Eu cred cã suntem un popor vegetal-
Cine-a vãzut vreodatã
Un copac revoltându-se?
I Believe
 
I believe that we are a botanic nation
Otherwise, where do we get this calmness
In which we await the shedding of our leaves?
Where from the courage
To start sliding ourselves on the sleep-toboggan
Close to death,
With the certainty
That we will be able
To be resurrected?
I believe that we are a botanic nation-
Who ever saw
A rebelling tree?

 

 

Scaieþi ºi zei
 
Scaieþi ºi zei uscaþi de soare
Schelete lungi, subþiri de temple
Rãmase albe in picioare:
Iremediabile exemple
Ale nemorþii ca povara.
Precum o nesfârºitã varã
Timpul intreg e doar o zi
Rãmasã vãduvã de seara,
În care frunzele nu cad
ªi nu pierd pagini trandafirii.
Nu e trecut, nu-i viitor,
Un azi etern, nãucitor,
Cu soarele deasupra nemiºcat
Nemaiânstare
Sã mãsoare
Fãrãderostul nemuririi.
 
Thistles and Gods
 
Thistles and gods scorched by the sun,
Long, thin skeletons of temples,
Standing pale survivors:
Irreparable examples,
Undeath is like a burden.
As an unending summer
All time is only a day
Widowed since night,
In which leaves do not fall
And the roses do not lose their pages.
There is no past, no future,
An eternal today, stunning,
With the sun above unmoving
Unable
To measure
Immortality’s failure.

 

 

Cetina   
 
Spectre de brazi mai vânturã stindarde              
De ceaþã, proorocind sfârºituri noi,
Dar cine are forþa în casandre
De cetini, chiar, sã creadã, dintre noi? 
 
Pe-acelaºi loc, dar mãturând cu pãrul               
Mult cãlãtoare zãri de cãpãtâi,                     
Topindu-ºi în rãºinã adevãrul,                   
Cel necrezut în scrâºnet, mai întâi,                        
Nu pot sã plece, nici mãcar nãluci. 
În jurul lor ºi cerul ºi apa emigreazã  
Vântul întreabã-ntruna „Nu te duci?“   
Cetina plânge-n hohot „Sunt acasã.“

Fir Tree

 

Spectres of fir trees still flutter pennants

Of fog, foretelling new endings,

Yet who has the courage, in Cassandra Branches,

if only to believe, between us?

 

On the same spot, yet brushing with their hair

The all-journeying skies of endings,

Melting the truth in their resin,

That unbelieved in screech, firstly,

They cannot leave, not even as ghosts.

Around them water and sky migrate.

The wind asks constantly: “Don’t you go?”

The fir tree sobs: “I’m home.”

 

 

Torquato Tasso   
 
Veni din întuneric spre mine el, poetul,
Poetul de spaimã ratat.
Era foarte frumos. Ca la razele röntgen
I se vedea în trup poezia.
Poezia nescrisã de fricã.
"Sunt nebun" – a rostit. De altfel ºtiam
Lucrul acesta din prefeþele cãrþilor,
Dar el îºi purta nebunia ca pe-o parolã
De intrare în noi, ca ºi cum ar fi spus:
"Mã rãscumpãr astfel
De lipsa-adevãrului din poemele mele.
E preþul imens. Vin spre tine.
Primeºte-mã!"
Dar eu am rãspuns: Pleacã de-aici!
"Scriam la lumina de autodafeuri – îmi spuse –
Simþindu-mi pe trup
Cãmaºa pãroasã care se-aprinde uºor.
Odaia mea avea ochi de cãlugãri ferestre
ªi-n loc de uºi, lipite una de alta, urechile lor
ªi ºoarecii ieºind din borte erau cãlugãri,
ªi noaptea pãsãri uriaºe-n sutane-mi cântau.
Tu trebuie sã înþelegi…" ªi cu degetu-ntins
Îmi aratã în trupul meu poezia,
Poezia nescrisã…
Dar eu am þipat: Pleacã de-aici!

Torquato Tasso

 

From darkness he came towards me, he,

The poet failed by fear.

He was very handsome. Like an X-ray

The poetry could be seen in his body.

The poetry unwritten out of fear.

“I’m mad,” he uttered. Besides, I knew

This fact from book prefaces,

But he wore his madness like a password

For entering us, like he would have said:

“This is a way to redeem myself

For the lack of truth in my poems.

The price is enormous price. I come

towards you. Receive me!”

But I declined: Leave me!

“I was writing in the auto dafé’s light

– he told me – Feeling my body,

The hairy shirt that easily lights up.

My room had monks’ eyes for windows

And instead of doors, stuck one to another, their ears.

And the rats coming out of holes were monks,

And at night gigantic birds in large habits sang for me.

You must understand…” And with a pointing finger

He reveals the poetry in my body,

The unwritten poetry…

But I screamed: Leave me!
 
Fiecare miºcare

Fiecare miºcare a mea
Se vede
În mai multe oglinzi deodatã,
Fiecare privire a mea
Se întâlneºte cu sine
De mai multe ori,
Pânã
Uit care
Este cea adevãratã
ªi cine
Mã-ngânã.
Stãpânã,
Mi-e fricã de somn
ªi ruºine
A fi.
Pentru mine
Orice rãsãrit are
Un numãr necunoscut de sori
ªi-o singurã
Adormitoare
Zi.
 
 
 
Each Move
 
 
Each of my moves
Is seen
Simultaneously in many mirrors,
Each look I take 
Meets with itself
Several times,
Until
I forget which is
The true one,
And who
Mocks me.
Mistress,
I am afraid to sleep
And ashamed
To be.
For me
Each and every sunrise has
An unknown number of suns
And a single
Soporific
Day.
 
 
Descântec de ploaie

Iubesc ploile, iubesc cu patimã ploile,
Înnebunitele ploi ºi ploile calme,
Ploile feciorelnice ºi ploile-dezlãnþuite femei,
Ploile proaspete ºi plictisitoarele ploi fãrã sfârºit,
Iubesc ploile, iubesc cu patimã ploile,
Îmi place sã mã tãvãlesc prin iarba lor albã, înaltã,
Îmi place sã le rup firele ºi sã umblu cu ele în dinþi,
Sã ameþeascã, privindu-mã astfel, bãrbaþii.
ªtiu cã-i urât sã spui "Sunt cea mai frumoasã femeie",
E urât ºi poate nici nu e adevãrat,
Dar lasã-mã atunci când plouã,
Numai atunci când plouã,
Sã rostesc magica formulã "Sunt cea mai frumoasã femeie".
Sunt cea mai frumoasã femeie pentru cã plouã
ªi-mi stã bine cu franjurii ploii în pãr,
Sunt cea mai frumoasã femeie pentru cã-i vânt
ªi rochia se zbate disperatã sã-mi ascundã genunchii,
Sunt cea mai frumoasã femeie pentru cã tu
Eºti departe plecat ºi eu te aºtept,
ªi tu ºtii cã te-aºtept,
Sunt cea mai frumoasã femeie ºi ºtiu sã aºtept
ªi totuºi aºtept.
 E-n aer miros de dragoste vie,
ªi toþi trecãtorii adulmecã ploaia sã-i simtã mirosul,
Pe-o asemenea ploaie poþi sã te-ndrãgosteºti fulgerãtor,
Toþi trecãtorii sunt îndrãgostiþi,
ªi eu te aºtept.
Doar tu ºtii –
Iubesc ploile,
Iubesc cu patimã ploile, înnebunitele ploi ºi ploile calme,
Ploile feciorelnice ºi ploile-dezlãnþuite femei…
 
 
 
 
Rain Chant
 
I love rains, I passionately love rains,
Maddened rains and calm rains,
Young-girl rains and loose female rains,
Fresh rains and boring, never-ending rains,
I love rains, I passionately love rains.
I like rolling through their tall white grass,
I like to rip off their blades and wear them in my teeth,
For men to become giddy seeing me like that.
I know it’s rude to say, “I am the most beautiful woman,”
It’s rude and perhaps not even true,
But allow me when it rains,
Only when it rains,
To utter the magic formula “I am the most beautiful woman.”
I am the most beautiful woman because it’s raining
And I look good with rain’s locks in my hair.
I am the most beautiful woman because it’s windy,
And the dress desperately struggles to cover my knees,
I am the most beautiful woman because you
Are away and I am waiting for you,
And you know of my waiting.
I am the most beautiful woman and I know to wait
Yet still I wait.
The scent of live love is in the air,
And all passers-by sniff the rain to feel this scent,
During this particular rain you can quickly fall in love,
All passers-by are in love,
And I wait for you.
Only you know –
I love rains,
I passionately love rains: maddened rains and calm rains,
Young-girl rains and loose female rains. 
 
Pietà
 
Durere limpede, moartea m-a-ntors
În braþele tale supus, aproape copil.
Tu nu ºtii dacã trebuie sã mulþumeºti
Sau sã plângi
Pentru fericirea aceasta,
Mamã.
Trupul meu, dezghiocat din tainã,
Este numai al tãu.
Dulci lacrimile tale îmi picurã pe umãr
ªi mi se strâng cuminþi lângã claviculã.
Ce bine e!
Neînþelesele peregrinãri ºi cuvintele,
Ucenicii de care eºti mândrã ºi care te sperie,
Tatãl, bãnuitul, nerostitul, veghind,
Toate-s în urmã.
Liniºtitã de suferinþã-nþeleasã
Mã þii în braþe
ªi pe furiº :
Mã legeni uºor.
Leagãnã-mã, mamã.
Trei zile numai sunt lãsat sã m-odihnesc
În moarte ºi în poala ta.
Va veni apoi învierea
ªi din nou nu-þi va mai fi dat sã-nþelegi.
Trei zile numai,
Dar pânã atunci
Mi-e atât de bine
În poala ta coborât de pe cruce,
Încât, de nu mi-ar fi teamã cã te-nspãimânt,
Lin mi-aº întoarce gura
Spre sânul tãu, sugând.
 
Piety
 
Clear pain, death returned me,
To your breast subdued, almost a child.
You do not know if you should thank
Or cry
For this happiness,
Mother.
My body, peeled out of the egg of mystery,
Is yours only.
Sweet, your tears drop onto my shoulder
And collect obedient near my collarbone.
How good it is!
Uncomprehended wanderings and the words,
Disciples of whom you are proud and who scare you,
The Father, the suspected, the unnamed, watching,
All are left behind.
Free of known suffering
You hold me
And secretly
Rock me gently.
Rock me, mother.
Three days only do I have to rest
In death and in your lap.
Rebirth will come after
And again you won’t be given to understand.

 Only three days,
But until then
It is so good for me
In your lap, lowered from the cross,
That, if I would not fear to scare you,
I would turn my mouth gently

Towards your breast, to suck.

 

 
Ar trebui                                              

Ar trebui sã ne naºtem bãtrâni,
Sã venim înþelepþi,
Sã fim în stare de-a hotãrî soarta noastrã în lume,
Sã ºtim din rãscrucea primarã ce drumuri pornesc
ªi iresponsabil sã fie doar dorul de-a merge.
Apoi sã ne facem mai tineri, mai tineri,
mergând,
Maturi ºi puternici s-ajungem
la poarta creaþiei,
Sã trecem de ea ºi-n iubire intrând adolescenþi,
Sã fim copii la naºterea fiilor noºtri.
Oricum ei ar fi atunci mai bãtrâni decât noi,
Ne-ar învãþa sã vorbim, ne-ar legãna sã dormim,
Noi am dispãrea tot mai mult, devenind tot mai mici,
Cât bobul de strugure, cât bobul de mazãre, cât bobul de grâu…
 
We Should
 
We should be born old,
And arrive wise,
To be capable of deciding our worldly fate,
To comprehend from the prime crux what ways begin
And only the wish to walk to feel reckless.
Then should we become younger, and younger, walking,
Mature and strong to arrive
At creation’s gate,
To pass through it and in love entering adolescents,
To be children at our sons’ birth.
Either way, they would then be older than us,
They would teach us to speak, rock us to sleep.
We would disappear even more, becoming even smaller,
Like a grape, like a pea, like a grain of wheat…
 
 
Totul

Frunze, cuvinte, lacrimi,
cutii de chibrituri, pisici,
tramvaie câteodatã, cozi la fãinã,
gãrgãriþe, sticle goale, discursuri,
imagini lungite de televizor,
gândaci de Colorado, benzinã,
steguleþe, portrete cunoscute,
Cupa Campionilor Europeni,
maºini cu butelii, mere refuzate la export,
ziare, franzele, ulei în amestec, garoafe,
întâmpinãri la aeroport, cico, batoane,
Salam Bucureºti, iaurt dietetic,
þigãnci cu kenturi, ouã de Crevedia,
zvonuri, serialul de sâmbãtã seara,
cafea cu înlocuitori,
lupta popoarelor pentru pace, coruri,
producþia la hectar, Gerovital, aniversãri,
compot bulgãresc, adunarea oamenilor muncii,
vin de regiune superior, adidaºi,
bancuri, bãieþii de pe Calea Victoriei,
peºte oceanic, Cântarea României,
totul.
 
Everything
 
Leaves, words, tears,
Matchboxes, cats,
Trams sometimes, queues for flour,
Ladybeetles, empty bottles, speeches,
Elongated images on TV,
Colorado beetles, petrol,
Flags, known portraits,
The Euro Cup,
Trucks of gas cylinders, export rejected apples,
Newspapers, Vienna loaves, blended oil, carnations,
Airport receptions, Cico, sweet bread rolls,
Bucharest salami, diet-yoghurt,
Gypsies selling Kent, Crevedia eggs,
Rumours, the Saturday night serial,
Coffee substitutes,
The world struggle for peace, choirs,
Production per hectare, Gerovital, anniversaries
Bulgarian tinned fruit, national meetings,
Superior regional wine, Adidas shoes,
Jokes, (security police) boys on Victoria Avenue,
Oceanic fish, Ode to Romania,
Everything.

 

Stuart Cooke

Written by mascara on . Posted in Poetry.

Stuart Cooke is a Sydney-based writer but at present he is in Chile undertaking research for a PhD on Australian and Chilean ecopoetics. His poetry, fiction and essays have appeared in various magazines in Australia, the USA and the UK, including upcoming editions of Overland and Meanjin. In 2007 his translation of Juan Garrido Salgado’s Once Poemas, Septiembre 1973 was published by Picaro Press.


 

 

Birthday Shift
 
The entire memory of waking, a
quarter of an hour ago, might also
be handed back to forgetfulness, incurring
                                                                   no loss. It’s amazing
how quickly it goes – money, I mean,
and love. I had love, once.
I had it I knew
it was there. But
you can’t write about that swift
and sudden fall from grace It’s
that mild evening, ruled
by still air. “Mordecai,” she asked, “what
became of the old books?”
                                                   “Books?”
He could have been contemptuous or filled
with hope: you can write this way, you
assembled in wash, blubber, observation,
folding
            silica,
can. Write. And I
turned on the television:
Germany’s done with words:
too much to be said; nothing
left
to say Our
daydreams carry us back to it. Love.
Love,
in the faint, white light. You can’t write
about that. At dawn
I see a fox
                 on the lawn the queerer
the dearer in pink the moment leaves
us,
and passes on.
 
 
I was filled with a desire to say, ‘Those
were the days’. Return. Victory shifts, you know, now
one man, now another. Shift. Light
shift. What silly
physics! (now as I look) You
can write lonely poetry. This armageddon of the brain
is lonely poetry and the Jew,
who was seen to be quite elderly,
made his own way to the door.
I came back filled. I hate
birthdays, this enforced
loneliness we step into
locations and change them history
channel blues.
 
 
I’m sorry, for whereas the real beginnings
of images
will give concrete evidence I
wouldn’t have fallen in love of the non-I
that protects the I if I wasn’t a lonely poet to teach
the world to laugh at virtue to drink
gin like love
on leaves. Parks filled
with the dream departed,
leaving him there, his heart racing with hope
shifts, birthdays shift
new work in old
light.
 
 
 Cited texts:

‘Breakfast’, by Martin Harrison
‘Stranger in Moscow’, by Michael Jackson
Riders in the Chariot, by Patrick White
‘Lighthouse Series’, by Kate Fagan
The Poetics of Space, by Gaston Bachelard
‘hare encounter’, ‘art nouveau’ and ‘nella casa di balla tutto balla’, by Michael Farrell

The Iliad, by Homer (trans. Robert Fagles)
 
 
 
Those Without Limbs
 from Sihanoukville, Cambodia
 
 
Those without limbs, those
with round stumps or shards of bone
 
covered up
 
 
are absent from clubs.
 
Clubs
 
are the realms of the beautiful,
 
 
the whole,
 
the bodies untouched by history.
Those without limbs are left
 
 
to drag themselves along the beachfront,
their half-thighs drawing thick lines
 
in sand
 
 
which we, the varnished, the well-
 
composed,
 
step over with wet feet, with
 
 
lovers
 
smiling, and damp wads of riel for the white
blood of bulbous, dissected coconuts.
 
 

Margaret Bradstock

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Margaret Bradstock has published four books of poetry. The most recent are The Pomelo Tree (which won the Wesley Michel Wright prize) and Coast (2005). In 2003 she was Asialink writer-in-residence at Peking University. Margaret is co-editor of Five Bells for Poets Union, and Honorary Visiting Fellow at the University of NSW.

 

 

Recherche Bay

“In wildness is the preservation of the world.” – Thoreau

When Aborigines watched
Abel Tasman beating up the coast
                    (overhangs of cliffs

their camping spots), the great eucalypts,
sclerophyll forests, were already old.
                Green is the colour of renewal,

of wild woodland and cultivated garden,
                    amber the fossilised resin
like tears, or blood on a scimitar’s curve,

the nets and traps of war.
If no-one is there can you still
                    hear the forests screaming?

Bulldozed out of history,
the gestures of reconciliation
                  become sites of mourning,

incendiaries dropped from a helicopter
our defeat, the blackened
                   fern-covered boles.

 

Pond Life

‘Memory is the only thing that binds you to earlier selves; for the rest, you become
an entirely different being every decade or so, sloughing off the old person,
renewing and moving on. You are not who you were…nor who you will be.’
                                                                          – Sebastien Faulkes, Charlotte Grey.

Your gardens reminding me
     of a different space, penny-frogs
          pulsating in darkness,

tea-lights on water.
     There is
          always water, recurring,

water I dive into, under,
     breathing, floating, drifting
          in tadpole existence,

 my memories fabrications.
     Sometimes the tide rises
          to the head of the cliff

(sighing among grasses),
     green weed tangles like hair.
          Dead fish, two-dimensional,

clutter the shoreline,
     eyes whittled out
          like holes in memory,

moonlight’s abandoned haul.
     Frogmen surface,
          leviathan-like

on the white tide.
     You are insubstantial,
          stitched into the seascape

and the clacking sound of boats.
     There are dwelling places,
          mansions within mansions,

 rooms within rooms,
     a labyrinth of mirrors.
          Waking, I am not here,

my amphibian selves
     spiralling down
          to the sea’s wrack.

 Shadow-puppets rap sound-tracks
     in crazed patois
          on the garden wall.     

 

The Baptist

Light like gauze,
an oasis somewhere before me
or a Messiah descending.

Living on locusts and wild honey
(dreaming of wine, of bread)
I find my chapel in the wilderness.
Caravaggio will paint me
identifiable by my bowl, reed cross
and leather girdle.
Herod Antipas will proffer my head
upon a platter
to please a lissom dancer.

 And I will ask
if what I saw as baptism
was merely death.

 
 – after St John in the desert, by Sidney Nolan

 

 

Anuradha Vijayakrishnan

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Anuradha Vijayakrishnan was born in Cochin, India. She completed a B.Tech in Chemical Engineering from Calicut University, Kerala and a post graduation in Management from XLRI, Jamshedpur. She writes fiction and poetry while pursuing a full time corporate career. In 2007, the unpublished manuscript of her first novel, Seeing the girl, was long listed for the 2007 Man Asian Literary Prize. Her work has appeared or is due to appear in Eclectica, Bare Root Review, Nth Position, Orbis, Desilit, Aesthetica, The Pedestal Magazine, The King’s English, Every Day Poets, Stony Thursday Anthology, Poetry Chain, Indian Literature, Muse India , Asia Literary Review and Magma.

 

 

Beads

 

In her hands they are like dust. Or sun-dried

blood, fine-polished. Glittering, unlike

her eyes that slept through the day and through

the caveman nights that came snaking

out of their den and shed their skin

on hers; on hers, for god’s sake.

 

With her hands, she unravels them on her

skin; that skin scrubbed twice and raw. The beads

drizzle over, touching off cold sparks, tiny

nerve spots that meet and combust. So there is

life yet, and there is something that lives. Rubies

beneath the damaged soil, secret black emeralds

that laugh at the night, laugh at the scarred day.

 

On her hands she makes red markings. One cross

for every spent force, one knot for each thing

that was taken. She moves those hands in clenched

circles – willing them to cleanse

and be cleaned.

 

The beads find their way to her feet. Sunspots fall

into her eyes and she turns them into tears.

 

 

Who dances?

 

When I dance, I am like a rustic. Oily-haired

and round armed. I flap my head and grin

at invisible birds. I rise and fall in the garden

sand, laugh out loud when the rhythm

beats my feet.

 

So this music suits; this wooden bench

on which I can dance suits too. I can clank

my rings, my beaded chains here. Can imagine

wood drums, swing my bountiful hips, go one-two

with my heels, my shoulders, my chin.

Snake-dance, peacock-dance; dance even

like a happy calf with new milk sloshing

in my mouth. Kick my donkey heels

as if they can’t break.

 

And then, the neighbours fall off, their pet dogs

and their studio kitchens fall

off. My cellphone shatters against the wall, and the internet

dissolves into unreality. Beetles and moths

gather in the corners to watch.

 

Green plants in window boxes shiver

at the feet, of this goddess

who dances, like a rustic.

 

Lorraine Marwood

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Lorraine Marwood is a Five Islands press poet and has two children’s books of poetry published as well as a verse novel with Walker ‘Ratwhiskers and Me’. Her latest verse novel ‘Star Jumps’ will be released in June 2009.  This novel really encompasses the influences of her poetry, the rural landscape and the surprising detail, all a way to celebrate life in words. Lorraine also writes poetry strategies and is available for workshops across all age levels. www.lorrainemarwood.com

 

 

Releasing

 

Her pelargoniums, her little clucks of treasure

strong square ooze like catspray

fans of flowers like dragon wings

a wintering of wooden shelves

step laddering the back door alcove.

 

I came into her shuttered world,

I could call her grandmother.

She prodded, poked, admonished, preached

every word a lesson to decipher

a frost crunch world where shyness

was fashioned into stalactites that sharded

straight for heart.

She locked love up like Easter chocolate

turned pale with mothballs-

but here I offer

the sizzle of sausages

the sharing of her soft feathery

double bed, twin trunks up on the wardrobe top

smocked cushions

a cold electric fire

and Grimm’s fairy tales

signed with love from Nanny

bought at EJ Brown’s bookshop.

 

I have blown to dandelion seed her love of words

not restrained them with dire consequences-

wood smoke and finches

arch over my back door

and a tiny skink lizard

races over the melted frost

mid morning.

I come into her sunlit world.

 

 

Salt Desert Donkey

 

We visited once on these salt desert plains
her wooden sixty year old house
only tree shade around,
desolation of farming inheritance.
 
She kept a donkey when all the other
farming wives kept chooks or ducks
or snails in their gardens.
 
She fed grey ears and braying,
softness in the salt-grit landscape.
 
The donkey moved around the periphery paddock,
looking down on a barbed wire garden,
stunted irises and under the tankstand
a scraggle of marguerites.
 
And in the autumn when paspallum reared like tiger snakes,
she mowed the measured square of her backyard lawn,
tossing the grey sleet of grass
into the donkey’s paddock.
 
Neighbours whispered about the
useless animal, its awkward shape
how salt eats more than pasture and trees,
laps at the very foundation of wooden houses
shearing sheds, windmills,
                         but this farmer’s
wife knows the seawater drink
of their gossip and reasons
that a donkey is future insurance
for salt desert trekking.
 
 
Celestial 
 
Between tractor lights
and the first tenting pegs of sky
he looks out to the night
liquid,
deep blue
with a scarf of cloud.
Stars trace the outline
of huge celestial tent,
incubator to his solitary thoughts.
 
It’s the one intense time of the year
when his temporal strand of humanity
feels the huge canopy of the unknown.
It’s not that he’s extraordinary,
he’s one of many; a time -worn
quantity of farmers out sowing the world’s
granary. It seems to him puny, slow,
awkward. The power of the tractor
sidles away to a cough. There above him
a star shoots, light cutting down through
the ridges of sky. He feels he could
put out his hand, squeeze the light’s shower
compress it like clay, tattoo his fingerprints,
but his reach is minuscule.
 
The fireworks spit and finish,
he turns the tractor and ploughs
another circumference of the paddock
he gulps in the night air,
believes he tastes stardust on his tongue.

 

Les Wicks

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Les Wicks has toured widely and seen publication across 11 countries in 7 languages. His 8th book of poetry is the Ambrosiacs (Island,2009).  

http://leswicks.tripod.com/lw.htm

 

 

Boy Soldier

 

He talks about childhood
and prays for old age. There is no middle.

Ishmael Beah shot their feet and after a day of screams
shot their heads for the birdless quiet of evening.
Soldiers in the grasslands
reciting Shakespeare while they
snort brown-brown.

He was twelve.
We are all programmed to believe, a flaw
in the biology.
Our flaky hearts
on all those disappointing flags.


Heather Taylor Johnson

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Heather Taylor Johnson moved from America to Adelaide in 1999. She holds a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Adelaide, is a poetry editor for Wet Ink magazine, and the author of the poetry collection Exit Wounds. She reviews poetry and other artforms for various publications. She has a husband, three children under six and a feisty pup, and finds the bathtub a welcome office space.  

 

 

Shovelling Snow
 
There is subtlety in a morning snow
silent from the picture window and I’m curled cat-like
on my favourite couch, hot chocolate in my favourite mug,
warming my two morning hands, contemplating objects hidden
covered and coated with winter;
that lump that grew beneath her not yet forty skin.
           
Last night the phone call.
I spend the day in sweater and sweats and knitted socks
typing away at what I don’t know (death buried beneath the snow?)
because I want insight and closure
and most of the time I sit, staring at the foreign snow,
waiting to grow numb.
           
At three o’clock my computer rests,
a second cup of chocolate waits
while the hanging sun, timid, waits
to drop below the layered roofs
and the stewing of moose sausage waits,
the uncorking of the South Australian cab sav too
-because we wish to toast her in her own native flavour
and Canadian red wine lacks the complexity we are after.
If only I could find my couch and sit in the silence
of the late afternoon snow
but the driveway’s impatient now, covered and coated
with piles and hours of fresh white subtlety. 
Christ but there is no subtlety in shovelling snow
and it does not dare to wait. 
 
Tomorrow they will bury her in the dry, cracked
summer-drought soil, her not-yet forty years,
and as they comfort one another in their daylight despair
this house will be quiet with sleep,
not conscious of how we long for the sun.
The midnight will bring more snow and it will cover
my driveway once more, it will cover the tracks of our daily lives,
it will cover the warmth of the deep underground.
 

 

Spaces

 

I suggest something different from longing,

entirely separate from belonging.

I propose spaces.

Not holes or gaps

implying absence or worse

emptiness

but spaces as places

between what we know.

 

The big sky

my mother’s face

pizza sauce served thickly.

‘Awesome’ ‘cookie’ ‘garbage can’

my brother’s crooked eye.

SUVs and mountain streams

a bluebird’s song a hummingbird’s wing, tall glasses of 2% milk

my father’s towering body.

 

Vineyards

combustion heaters

saying ‘partner’ rather than ‘husband’

and sometimes stopping

to remember

he has an accent.

Port dolphins

gumtree sky

the footy the ocean

ubiquitous meat pies.

 

The space I am suggesting

between here and there

is not so big—

 

it’s enormous.

 

 
before noon
brick backyard
water bottle and phone:
or ‘my birthday poem’
 

The international dateline confuses calendars and friends

and relatives (who I take less lightly),

so yes, they all have an excuse.

Here’s to calling card expirations

and the baby’s almost due

and I didn’t get home until late last night,

and here’s to my forever forgiving simply just forgot

but you must know this:

that on this particularly sentimental day,

that here so far from the reaching Blue Ridge

I am waiting   telephone on table

brick backyard. 

 

This day is hot

like the summer tried to sneak away,

got caught red sweaty-handed

and spilled all over my body,

and on this day I wish the scent

of the ocean three kilometres away,

for my son to sleep a full two hours,

to tan myself bare  

thinly layered sunscreened skin

wisteria my thick fortress.

 

Sweet family and those pictures of party hats

children with vague names

brown and green corduroy clothes

of the mid 70s we all seemed to wear,

remember this day

colour me into your latest photo

and stick it on the fridge.

 

Undomesticated university girls,

the river dudes with holey jeans,

my three-year tangle mistake

who shared my tiny bed,

our drinks were always raised to the camera’s lens,

so raise your drinks now, beyond your horizon;

it’s midnight your time 

and I’m before noon   water bottle ready.

 

I wish for the dj playing soul

to keep on spinning til the day is done

as I wish for accents like my own

because nothing speaks more of home

than an emphasized r at the end of my name,

the telephone and a strong memory

of an endlessly wooded grass backyard

and the reaching Blue Ridge in the distance.

 

 

Angela Meyer reviews “Fragile Context” by Kristin Hannaford

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Fragile Context
 
By Kristin Hannaford
 
Post Pressed
ISBN 9781921214189.
324/50 Macquarie St,
Teneriffe, Qld, 4005
order from postpressed@gmail.com
 
Reviewed by ANGELA MEYER
 
 
 
Poetry can exist between boundaries of communication. It can have an awareness of itself in the uniqueness of its form, unlike a blanket of prose which acts to unfold a narrative. Kristin Hannaford’s poems also thematically blur or dissolve lines, those related ones that exist between culture and nature. She invokes the binary to acknowledge one’s reliance on the other, to promote the reader’s recognition of one because of the other, and just subtly, the danger of one overwhelming the other. In such a way, the form of the poem and its awareness of itself creates a beautiful irony, that the poem is a product of culture, of humankind, but would not exist without nature’s influence. In a way then, much of the poems in ‘Fragile Context’ border on romanticism, although with the modern interruption of ‘progress’ and moments of post-modern inevitability or acceptance.
           
The poem ‘Mountain’ is a dedication to the poet’s father: a joyful poem of slowly reduced stanzas. There is an empathetic association with the father’s experience, taking a long trip to work and back each day. The narrator imagines him on the train with a utopian home-vision, a life-affirming comfort that awaits him. ‘The distance between the lookout and the car is short./Your chest is tight with breathlessness//and this view.’ The last part of this stanza is both italicised and indented to the end of the passage. It enables the reader to hold their breath on the mountain, which is metonymic for the spirituous joy in nature’s whole, as are the eucalypt leaves he inhales. Overall, the poem explores a quiet acceptance of the balance of work and home life, a gratefulness for the coexistence of environments.
           
The poet’s children and lover are an extension of the self, nature’s existence in bodily form. ‘Birthday’ presents a contemplation of aging, uncomfortably related to rough wood and the smoothing over of oil, coating as opposed to fixing. But the poet’s child’s smile brings her back to the concentration of a moment and negative reflection is transformed into ‘possibilities’. In ‘Losing the Boy’ the child is breaking his link with the mother and becoming one with new formations. Hannaford innovatively describes a skate-park and its occupants. Appropriate terminology is made poetic as the reader sees, hears and senses the environment, anxious with her to find her son. He is crossing between her and this new culture ‘Almost unrecognizable,/ my son, the man -/ if it weren’t for the blue laughter of his eyes.’ Here, the poet reclaims the son, as forever inseparable from his biology, as nature’s persistence, even when the body is immersed in cultural activity. The lover is invoked in ‘Dismembered (two voices)’. A degree of mystery is maintained in the intimacy of the poem. It literally dismembers its actors, body parts explained, explored and satisfied, or are they? The line ‘this is enough’ brings comfort. The lover also exists in ‘The Night Storms’, a poem about consistency. Where change is inevitable, a memory can reinvigorate what has gone. Around these human endings and reimaginings, nature pervades. The majestic is tied by Hannaford to the everyday – ‘Lightning appears at first as a distant flicker -/ the way a television screen lights up a hallway.’
           
The poetic observer also experiences moments alone. ‘In the Spirit of Impermanence’ is a manic poem, a rebellion. It is an ode to joyful poetry refusing to be constricted by fashions or movements. It seems inspired by frustration and a ‘throwing off’ of burdensome expectation. She encourages one to ‘abandon pronouns & spirited rehearsals’. In ‘She Leaves From an Australian Forest’ there is a less celebratory aloneness. There is a sense of loss pervading the sparse syntax. One of the few poems with no punctuation or capitals, it flows from one end to the other, space and words interpolated as the woman is with the forest she is departing from. It connotes the coexistence of woman with nature. She recalls someone who is addressed, thinking of returning to them after day-to-day frustrations, contemplating amongst ‘leaves which refuse to homogenise’. Her mood is far-reaching, it is not just the ‘you’ addressed in such statements as ‘stands of trees humanise our frailty’ but a collective. The natural elements and formations remind her of bodily features, again making human and nature synonymous. The last line is potent as we imagine her leaving this memory, this spirit to join the sun ‘ascending’, spirituality and transience are invoked, and the last line resonates with its evocative ‘sounds of sclerophyll breaking’.
           
Body/nature/art are combined again in ‘Graphica Botanica’, and in ‘Music for Insects’ with focus on the eye and vision. The poet in this one is segregated by a window, but the eye explores nature with a disembodied power. Humans are as fragile as birds in ‘Whistling’ and ‘Displacement’.
           
Narrative transition is implemented in ‘Pumpkin Island Notes’, a series of four poems. They act as a snapshot of a holiday – known and unknown, nature intertwined with history and characters melded to place – ‘a memory of place, sharp as first incision’. It is extraordinarily vivid, and thickly encapsulating. There are pieces metonymic and metaphoric – coral, bones, for an ocean, a human, a whole. They are then fleshed out with mini-narratives of characters in place – past and present. Another destination is traversed in ‘Tracing Air – South Island’. It begins almost with the rhythm of a nursery rhyme. There is a passionate embrace of nature, a moment in time. It is a poem to smile at. The voice is overwhelmed at the beginning, all is ‘too magnificent’, but then the woman and land become one, she recognises herself in it – ‘a green wild dress// riding thighs and abdomens’. The play of lines with steps and pauses, the assonance and slight-rhymes create an anticipatory envelopment. The development of tone by the end is celebratory and of a woman recognised.
           
The poet’s delight at language, the discovery of words, their usage, their bodily motion (the tongue deciphering them) is evident in much of the work. In ‘Fishing (a meditation)’ the poet applies words for the value of their sound. Scientific names ‘Saccostrea glomerata’, textural like the fingers on the fishing line. Words italicised for consideration, tied in with sensory recollection, conscious associations – ‘Estuary, the word coats tongue/ and memory, sediment. Silt/ mixtures of detritus and the fecund.’ The construction of the fisherman is not as important as the quiet, the beauty of solitude and the engagement in an enjoyed activity, much the same as reading a poem.
 
In all, there is much to discover within the pages of ‘Fragile Context’. The curiosity of language carries on to a creative curiosity of narrative. The final poem ‘Jesus in the Swimming Pool’ playfully questions a character’s existence. It is a philosophical finish to the chapbook, inviting the reader to question the environment around them, and further, themselves within the environment. In essence, it is their ‘context’ that is brought forward. Are we to float also? What does this Jesus-figure see that the other swimmers with their heads down do not? Outside the pool are the forests and mountains and many-layered humanities where each reader carves a tract. The poetic voice is not only an observer of these trajectories, but a questioner of the divisions that exist between them. Hannaford traverses nature and culture and ultimately displays awareness, preciousness, and most certainly the encouragement of joy in such fragility.  

 

Martin Edmond

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Martin Edmond lives and writes in Sydney. His most recent book is The Supply Party: Ludwig Becker on the Burke & Wills Expedition

 

 
Three Lakes
 

My mind takes a holiday and my body, faithful and indissoluble accompanist, goes along for the ride. We circumambulate a sacred lake above which the mountain floats white on a white sky like something that cannot be yet is. Later I drive around another profaned by corpses from an ancient massacre; about the first we walk in perfect clarity, the second I round in a miasma of confusion and get lost: body and mind crying blindly out for soul. Had I forgotten there is a third in which all of our complexities are mired? It is like this in all the old places. New memories rise up with the alarm cries of birds and say: Go! Depart this place! Come here not as you are but as you were or would be! Nevermore! Etc. The bush fizzing with tui in the glory of the morning. Light glinting from the leaves and from the swift mirror of another lake, across which the once baleful cone now looks almost benign. As if the echo of catastrophe can only linger for so long before a sleepy domesticity of sun and shadow prevails; as if the days outlast the nights. There’s nobody here but me and the birds: paradise ducks honking as they swim out past the landing place. Black swans spreading their wings in alarm as they stagger clumsy through the mud to water’s edge then instantly transform to nonpareils of elegance and grace. Little blue ducks that were here last time I came as well. The wordless fascination of wordless things. That silence in which all other silences inhere. I can almost touch it—there, past the weir, past the raupo, past that greeny slope and past the sky. In the visitor’s centre the man from Tuhourangi is thinking of giving up his curatorial duties and going to Port Hedland to drive a road train. Port Hedlands, he says. Headlands maybe. Uncorrected. What is interred here laments still in his eyes. It is written on a plaque beside the road: They lay scattered in the deep night, the intense night; the sorrow and grief a tattoo of pain on my skin; and tears stream from my eyes for my dear departed ones. I show him the photo of the man I’m interested in. That’s one of my great great uncles, he says, but I don’t know much about him. And that little he does not say. Rewiri not Rawiri. Bare feet not boots as I had always thought. The quizzical look of one who has died and been reborn: we are not separate and distinct he says or seems to say. Mind body and soul: three lakes with one source. Turbulent or calm. Fathomless. Full of green bones. Or crayfish. Or the massive weedy trunks of trees. In those black depths you may drown. Fall through the earth all the way to China. Become engulfed in tendrils of fear, the terror of forgetting, that dreadful sink of longing. Although I wanted to I did not go through the dark doorway to the buried village. There was an ache in my soul as I drove away, bereft, unsatisfied: like a spirit hungering for blood so it can speak what it knows. And this was not some kind of possession from outside, this was me. Us. Mind body soul. Spirit. And then I knew we must go there again another time.

 

Jaydeep Sarangi reviews “Touch” by Meena Kandasamy

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Touch

By Meena Kandasamy
Peacock Books Mumbai
 
ISBN: 81-88811-87-4
 
 
Reviewed by JAYDEEP SARANGI

 

 
Dalit literatures in India are subversive, or structurally alternative to the models prescribed by traditional Hindu aesthetics precisely because they are literatures of sociological oppression and economical exploitation. Dalit literatures are essentially a shock to tradition and sense. They are an assault to the anthropomorphic practice of castism in Indian social convention. A sound piece of Dalit literature is militant in texture and aggressively blunt in meaning. It challenges codified language (because it has so far been used and manipulated only by the dominant, discriminating powers); it challenges assumptions; it challenges age-old, world-views. Its temporal and political designation does not give justice to the artist whose intentions may subsequently be ignored . It is an aesthetics of pain, and a prolonged longing; a powerful aesthetics of resistance. The poems in Touch  by Meena Kandasamy amplifies, illustrates, and carries on this struggle for power and autonomy by women poets. Apart from her expert use of language, she has a sincerity of feeling and an honesty of experience rarely encountered. For Meena Kandasamy, the young Tamil poetess, poetry is about empirical truth and experience and she writes and reflects from where she is:
 
We: their daughters,
We: the daughters of their soil.
 
We, mostly, write.”     (‘Their Daughters’)
 
Her poetry is at best of private sensibility. Her consciousness is firmly yoked to the world around her, a world characterised by ecstasy and pain, love and despair. Touch contains a  ‘Foreword’ by Kamala Das where the renowned poetess writes, ‘Older by nearly half a century, I acknowledge the superiority of her poetic vision’. Meena follows the psychological tradition of Sylvia Plath and Langston Hughes, a ‘fabric rare and strange’. Womens’ fixed role as caregivers was ideologically determined by their biological capacity to bear children and that was through a fixed set of codes represented by ‘categorizers’ as Kamala Das has expressed in her own poem, ‘An Introduction’. Meena Kandasamy regards her poetic corpus as a process of coming to terms with her identity and consciousness : her “womanness, Tamilness and low/ outcasteness”, labels that she wears with pride. Meena has honed her sociological awareness of what it means to be a woman in the caste-ridden, social groupism of Tamil Nadu (a Southern state in India).
 
Her poetic self gasps in darkness to search for her emotional root proclaiming it as her heritage. This becomes a source of vitality for the poet’s journey. Her confessional mode is not as radical as we find in Mamang Dai, Archana Sahani and Kamala Das. She explores a wide range of subjective possibilities and relates them to her own identity and sociological formulation. Her poetry arises not out of reading and knowledge, but out of active engagement. Touch is rich with varied dexterity that explore the states of mind and genuine feminine sentiments.
 
          Writing becomes a means of creating a place in the world; the use of the personal voice and self-revelation are means of self-assertion. Meena’s self-expressive poems permit forbidden or ignored emotions to be expressed in ways which reflect the true voice of feeling; she shows how an Indian woman poet can create a space for herself in the public world. Across time and space, the woman writer, especially the woman poet, is engaged in an on going dialectic with the dominant cultural hegemonies to negotiate a space for the creative woman, where authentic female experiences can be articulated freely. Meena’s poems record the age-old class hierarchy in Indian society. Her poem, ‘Becoming a Brahmin’ records the sad plight of the so-called lower class people of Indian society:
 
Step 1: Take a beautiful Sudra girl
Step 2: Make her marry a Brahmin
Step 3: Let her give birth to his female child
Step 4: Let this child marry a Brahmin
Step 5: Repeat steps 3-4 six times
Step 6: Display the end product. It is a Brahmin.
 
Here words are like quicksilver carrying with them the sparkle of sense. In the sheer magic of rhythm, music and in the beauty of coalescing visual and auditory sensations, these lines are rarely surpassed in modern Indian poetry in English.
 
 
Flaming green of a morning that awaits rain
And my lover speaks of rape through silences,
Swallowed words and the shadowed tones
Of voice. Quivering, I fill in his blanks.
Green turns to unsightly teal of hospital beds
And he is softer than feathers, but I fly away
To shield myself from the retch of the burns
Ward, the shrill sounds of dying declarations,
The floral pink-white sad skins of dowry deaths.
                                   
                        ( “My Lover Speaks of Rape”)
 
 
             Meena’s poetic mode ranges from the meditative to sensuous where the metaphysical subtlety of arrivals and departures are ambivalent. A feature that impresses and ultimately convinces the readers is the poet’s readiness to allow conflicting voices to be heard from all contending perspectives. Her poems pose a tension that reaches out to the reader, arousing in one a sense of need that will not be satisfied:
 
“What will you say of your feeling
Living with a sister who terrorizes
Even manic depressions out of your mind?
 
 (‘Sage in the Cubicle’)
 
There is always a haunting note of despondency marked in Meena’s poetic lines. We may refer to her poem, ‘Immanuel’:
 
Now, if there be any mourning
Let it be for our heroes
Yet to die, fighting…
 
Meena’s poetic lines seem to echo from life itself, from the pauses of loss and vacuity in her sociological repression in a class-stratified Tamil society. Meena deeply penetrates the inner pores of the feminine psyche and brings out the strength and power of life. Sanjukta Dasguta, a Bengali poetess, writes
 
I am sangam and shakti
Power of fire, water, air and earth(.)
 
 (‘Identity’, Sanjukta Dasgupta)
 
Like all confessional poets, Meena gives literary form a new sense of personality, attaching value to the image of man. She raises her confessional traits to the level of a specific universal appeal. Her quest for identity is not the spiritual Odyssey; it is a human journey, a sociological journey that dignifies the reader:
 
Caste, yet again authored a tragedy
He, disease wrecked , downtrodden.
( ‘Prayers’)
 
In the poem ‘Take This for an Answering’ Meena records her voice of protest ;
 
You press me into answering
When and why and where and how
I could start to dislike you.
 
             Debates over Dalit studies in India have intensified studies of anti-colonial resistance in general which have been augmented and contested by a broad range of studies. Through Meena’s conscious poetic lines Dalits are hitting back in coloniser’s tongue. The poems in Touch represent the indigenous lifestyle. They resist colonial acts of authority and oppression through their textual transmission.

 

 

Michelle Cahill reviews “Language For a New Century”

Written by mascara on . Posted in Reviews/Essays.

Language For A New Century
 
Edited by Tina Chang, Nathalie Handal, Ravi Shankar
 
ISBN 978-0-393-33238-4
2008 WW Norton
 
 
reviewed by MICHELLE CAHILL
 
 
Language For a New Century, published last year by Norton, is a collection of poetry from Asia, and the Middle East. The book is a poetic odyssey, an answer to the nationalistic rhetoric that followed the destabilising events of 9/11. Compiling 400 poems by an equal number of poets writing in 40 languages, this book marks a six year collaboration between three American poets: Tina Chang, Ravi Shankar and Nathalie Handal. All three poets have experienced some form of exile, or crisis, in their attempt to interpolate an Eastern and Western identity. Their definition of the East is broad and inclusive enough to include the ruptures of diasporas, as well as other gaps such as the often-neglected poetry of Central Asia. Their categories are fluid and unstable, crossing the boundaries of religion and state, thereby encompassing countries like Sudan or Tunisia, which are classified as both Asian and African. Undeniably, the process of selection has been mired by challenges and problematic constructs, such as the balance of representation or indeed the notion of identity, which becomes framed in a particular way. The decision to publish a single poem by each of the poets is well intentioned and egalitarian. While this broadens the scope of the collection, to some extent it limits the depth to which a reader may engage with an individual poet’s work.
 
Nonetheless this is a bold and visionary anthology with an inspired title. The collection is an excellent resource and a generous contribution to contemporary transnationalist literature. Well-indexed and annotated, arranged thematically, rather than geographically, each section of the book is introduced by a personal response from one of the three editors, taking the form of a ficto-critical essay. I found these essays compensated for the anthology’s scope and density, which at times feels encyclopaedic. I enjoyed the extended metaphors and the commentaries provided. “Parsed into Colours” describes Handal’s first collisions with racism. She recalls an incident during a childhood spent in the Caribbean, when she was asked by a Caucasian neighbour why she was playing with three Haitian girls. Ravi Shankar’s essay “This House, My Bones” brings into lucid focus the cultural hyphenation experienced by the poet on returning to suburban America after a year spent in Madras, where he was taken to be blessed by a Hindu priest and have his head shaved and covered in sandalwood paste.
 
I returned nearly bald, to Virginia in the middle of the school year. I had been a rare specimen in India, marvelled at for being American, and coming back I thought some modicum of magic would remain with me..…Those were unsettled times because I was both literally and metaphorically between homes. (381)
 
           Carolyn Forché, in her foreword, describes how the arrangement of the poems follows “nine realms of human experience”. There are obvious thematic classifications such as childhood, home, identity, exile and war. But the anthology includes poems which are equally inspired by, or evoke an understanding of mystery, spirituality, sexuality and love. One is struck, as ever, by poems about childhood, replete with vital perceptions and vivid images suggestive of those early encounters with language and otherness. Joseph O. Legaspi’s “Ode to My Mother’s Hair” is a lyric disclosure in which the mother’s hair is metonymic of protection, nourishment, absorbing the domestic scents of “milkfish, garlic, goat;”. The hair becomes an embodiment of nature. Fragile memories and emotions are evoked, balanced by a lyrical composure, suggesting the poet’s trust.
           
            And in this river
            my mother’s wet, swirling hair
           
            reminds me
            of monsoon seasons
            when our house,
            besieged by wind and water
            teetered and threatened to split open,
            exposing the diorama
            of our barely protected lives (11)
 
Here, as in many of the poems in this collection, the traumas of poverty, difference and migration cross a threshold into a space transformed.
 
          Pak Chaesam’s haunting poem “The Road Back”, renders the mother as a central, if tireless figure, returning home to her sleeping children, after working all day. Within the domestic context, she is identified with nature’s elemental beauty.
 
            Noone to see, no one
            to comprehend when she unties
            the starlight she carries back on her forehead,
            and shakes loose the moonlight
            that clings to her sleeves. (20)
           
           If the mother is a grounding figure in exile’s economically harsh terrain, she is also depicted as being anti-patriarchal, sometimes subversive. Childhood marks out a space of nostalgia, of heightened pleasure or play, a space of inspiration and dreams. It’s a space soon to be challenged by the different forms of political or sexual oppression which many of these poets confront. This is a book of silenced, unspeakable and unattended narratives.
 
          I was disturbed by the brutality of R. Cheran’s “I Could Forget All This” (204), translated from Tamil by Lakshmi Holmstrom. It depicts convincingly detailed  images of atrocities committed  in the genocide war against Tamils: “a fragment of a sari/that escaped burning”, “a thigh-bone protruding/from an upturned, burnt-out car.” Within the same section, “Earth of Drowned Gods”, I was struck by the starkness of the poem “White Lie” written by the Lebanese poet Abbas Beydoun and translated from the Arabic by Fady Joudah.
 
            The truth is also blood.
            And it might be a piece of tongue
            or something severed from us.
            We might find it in semen
            or in dust if these two things
            are not simply appearances     (215)
 
           The poem challenges the notion of narrations, nations and language, relying on symbolism to convey states of oppression. The role of translation is a crucial to a trans-cultural anthology, since it constitutes an inter-cultural dialogue. Through the filter of a translator, the poems take on a similar but not exactly identical shape, metonymic of difference and hybridity. There is an element of trust one places in the translator’s understanding of the text and the context in which the poem is written. A reader enters into this process, at the finishing stages as a receptor of cultural dialogue. Translations enable the reader to more fully appreciate the complexity of identity, place and culture. Far from being passive, the reader breathes life into the diverse range of these texts. Reading becomes an act of intimacy – we follow the poet’s voice as it travels across languages, cultures, landscapes and memories. One of the impressive collaborations of this anthology is the generous inclusion and careful selection of translations.
 
          While there are poems aplenty by established or illustrious poets such as Mahmoud Darwish, Nissim Ezekiel or Vénus Khoury-Ghata, it becomes a political implement that we discover many astonishing voices scarcely known in the West, as well as those censored within their own country. Nadia Anjuman, a young Afghani poet, was killed by her husband, at the age of twenty-five, for writing against the oppression of Afghani women. Her poignant poem, “The Silenced” (230) reverberates with intensity.
 
            I have no desire for talking, my tongue is tied up.
            Now that I am abhorred by my time, do I sing or not?
 
Inwardly disposed, many of these writers find moments of liberation from the suffering in exile or alienation. The section titled, “Bowl of Air and Shivers”, attests to this spiritual and philosophical vision. The Tibetan poet Woeser, whose poem is translated from Tibetan by d dalton, juxtaposes the political and the divine, as a way of recording resistance.
           
     But here, in the Tibet that is daily ascending
                daylight nurtured by the gods’ ether
                the devils’ fumes also arrive   (494)
 
          True to the range of styles and forms found in this anthology, there are more ironic engagements with the divine. Vishwanatha Satyanarayana’s “Song of Krishna” personifies the god as a spoiled lover, undisciplined, announcing himself inconveniently to the speaker, while she is bathing: Debjani Chatterjee’s whimsical poem “Swanning In” depicts the Hindu goddess of the arts, Saraswati as a gracious if “unexpected guest”. “Even in Fortress Britain,” the poet recognises a pervading presence in absence, an aporia, reminiscent of home, of Heaven, or “a neighbourhood in India.” In “Cycle” the Nepalese poet, Bimal Nibha, compares a humble and ordinary object with the self. The lost bicycle with all its imperfections becomes the vehicle of the poet’s body: his “weight”, his “measure” and “breath”. These poems illustrate how restraint, humour, or the supple use of metaphor can construct specificity and culturally-encoded meanings.
 
          The achievement of Language For A New Century is literary, ethical and political. The collection provides moments of cultural dialogue: selection, commentary and memoir. It invites us to enter the margins of literature where oblivion and oppression are being resisted. As a reference book, it embraces diversity. It responds to humanity as a sweeping caravan of sentient beings who share their journey through tribulations, luminosity, irony and joy. Sometimes this syncretism fails to clarify subtle differences for the reader. The essays, at times, embody an excess of rhetoric, but overall, this is a significant and compelling anthology, which offers new and vital perspectives. Language For a New Century addresses the inherent imbalance in a canon that has, for too long, privileged the West.
 

Margaret Bradstock reviews “A Cool And Shaded Heart”

Written by mascara on . Posted in Reviews/Essays.

A Cool and Shaded Heart

Noel Rowe

(Vagabond Press, ISBN 97805511307, $25)                                 

 
Reviewed by MARGARET BRADSTOCK
 
 
Just under a year since Noel Rowe’s untimely death, Vagabond Press have graced us with a volume of his collected poems, selected by editor Michael Brennan. The collection does not include Rowe’s first book, Wings and Fire, which he had consciously moved away from, but Section I comprises early poems published in university and literary journals, and selections from his second work, Perhaps After All (1999). This section is especially significant in offering:
 
          examples of many of the key themes Rowe pursued throughout his
          writing, such as the work of mourning, the significance of family
          origins, relations and childhood, the evolution of spirituality and the
          questioning of received faith, communion with others through friendship
          and loss, and the day-to-day politics of simply being in the world at the
          end of the twentieth century.        (Preface, p.11)
 
The opening poem, written for the poet’s mother, exemplifies a number of these themes as well as Rowe’s versatility with traditional rhyme and rhythm patterns:
 
You lift your cup in the weak light, the bare
morning, and steam is touching you.
  
You eat toast, cut and buttered thin,
while the house settles breathing about you.
  
You and the furniture take the signs in
of children and time. Photographs hold
 
but do not give. The jacaranda has made mauve
again, the frangipani white with bruise of gold.
                                                 
                                                    (from “You Lift Your Cup,” p.15)
 
Material things become sacred in the context of emotional connection. Likewise, in the rest of this section, insights and images surprise with their sensitive grasp of the moment, as poems celebrate the existence of friends and observed strangers.
    
Section II comprises the early, unedited manuscript of the collection Next to Nothing (2004), with the poems in their original order. Particularly moving are poems on the death of Rowe’s father, the emotion spare, again presented indirectly through everyday images:
 
running his finger like the wind along the fence
to feel its worried grain
noticing beneath the strong and almost everlasting fig tree
the cows sitting black shoulders forward like nuns at prayer
                                                                (from “Perhaps after all he hasn’t gone,” p.31)
                                                                                                                   
                                                                Habits shaped                                                                                                  
for thirty-six years of marriage hang about the house
and wonder what to do.
                                                   (from “Pentecost,” p.32)
 
This section also includes conversations overheard on buses, dramatic monologues, and, in “War Coverage” (p.48), an exposé of the political-speak which masks our perception of the realities of war, so that:
 
                              It’s only later that the images we see
 
of Baghdad’s skin being stripped and sent away weeping,
of blood lost and stumbling through the camera’s eye,
of children’s limbs abruptly stopped and going nowhere,
really do disturb:
 
The beautifully understated sequence “Magnificat,” in the voice of the Virgin Mary, underscores the humanity of Christ and queries the inevitability of his resolve. Cadences stretch across lines, the enjambment carrying the forward impulse of the poems:
 
Last night, when the bread went
from my hand to his, it was bruised,
and still he carried the scent
of the broken jar, the sinner’s nard.
When, to take his wine, he bent
his shoulders forward, I was afraid
to ask, did he wish, now, I had refused?       (p.60)
 
               Having seen so many reversals,
I should have known he would test his muscles
 
on the stone, and walk away from the dazed
grave, leaving its mouth open and amazed.    (p.61)
 
Other poems are variously written for friends and mentors (“Watermelon, the only word I have”; “For Kevin Lee, Professor of Classics”), experiment with form and style (“On This Winter Morning”; “Backyard Blues”), or make connections between Buddhist thought and traditional Western theology.
    
The fourth section of the book, the complete text of Touching the Hem, written during Rowe’s initial period of cancer treatment, is indisputably his finest work. In her review of the 2006 volume, Judith Beveridge reminds us that
 
          Rowe’s greatest gift in these poems is to see beyond personal distress
          and discomfort and to connect with what one could argue is poetry’s
          most significant benefit: community.
                                                                           (Southerly, vol. 67, no.3, 2007, p.223)
 
Again the wry, spare imagery does duty for statements of suffering and loss, as in poem 13:
 
Today I’m allowed home,
taken, after one month away,
by the occupational therapist. She wants
to see how much the house needs to be
modified. The bed, the leather lounge,
the kitchen table, the madonnas, buddhas and paintings all
indicate this is the place where I used to live
but now they appear in a different light,
one that is faded, less substantial. I’d like                                                                   
to make it to the garden but can only stand                                                                
at the back door (the therapist says another step
is needed) wondering if the lilies from
my mother’s garden are still alive. By now
it’s raining, trees are rubbing themselves up against
the cleaned air, and a bird is darting past
the frangipani tree without a sound.               (p.151)
 
Moments of heightened lyricism contrast with the seemingly matter-of-fact, a microcosm of acknowledged temporality. The phrase “the place where I used to live” suggests that the poet has already moved on.
    
In his reactions to both living and dying, Rowe does indeed “touch the hem,” and a reading of the poems in A Cool and Shaded Heart allows us particular insight into that state of grace.         

 

 

Cassandra O’Loughlin

Written by mascara on . Posted in Poetry.

Cassandra O’Loughlin is an Arts graduate from the University of Newcastle. Her poems have appeared in the Newcastle University Creative Writing anthologies, Southerly, Poetrix, Eureka Street and Catchfire Press publications. She won the Catchfire Press regional poetry prize in 2004

 

 

 

South of Birubi on Newcastle Bight
  
An evening breeze cools the hot sand
down by the shacks in Tin City
where a woman squats, scaling fish.
The iridescent scales are adding lustre
to her freckled, weathered skin.
The air smells of summer, salt,
the sea-spray is seasoning my tan,
and everything is tinged with fish-oil yellow
from the kerosene lamp and the crackling campfire.
 
Her grandfather built this shack
in the Depression.
It’s mullet-coloured, makeshift,
with a low-hipped lean-to
that drains rainwater into a fluted tank.
Potted gardens and pumpkins
stand as if in a dole-queue,
bleached and sun-hardened.
Beachwear pegged to a rope, is wind-filled
and ghost-dancing in the dunes’ creeping shadows.
 
All around are the vast and shifting sands,
arrested in the west by the Old Man
Banksia trees, bracken fern, mat rush and burrawang.
Small shrubs on the occasional knolls
look like old men dancing.
 
I tell the woman my grandfather is dead,
and I’m looking for his mate.
He’s dead too, she says. All the old ones are dead.
A mug of tea, offered at arm’s length, draws
a line in the sand between us.
 
She wipes the beautiful sequins from the worn blade,
as the ocean spills its long syllable
between the land and silence.
Then she scoops the prawns
from a bucket of brine
and drops them into the boiling pot.
They turn from slime green to salmon pink,
and I think:
nothing ever is as it seems.
 
The sun is shining
through the warp and weft of black velvet,
and a lifetime
is creeping up behind me
as if on stilts.
In the shadow of my hat
I watch the waves
rising as if behind glass,
suspending shoals of fish—
silver, catching the light.
 
I stride over the low-tide rooms,
periwinkle bathtubs, basins
and slap-stuck seaweed curtains.
My name is uttered
amid the litterinids: conniwinks and noddiwinks,
as if I existed in the gaps of memory
with the ghosts of the wind and the water. 
There’s an ancient, liquid language
over the dunes, the middens,
and a sudden, eerie chill lifts me up,
and like a great wave in the throes of being itself,
tosses me as if I were weed.
 
 
Belonging
 
Women, squatting on spinifex,
weave green reed baskets for the tourists.
Their skirts are a brilliant blaze
against the red earth.
Their eyes and teeth a shock of whiteness.
Their talk on and on
is as old as the sand.
 
Now one of them, a wizened Elder,
tells stories about the water-holes, the rocks,
the stars in their flight across the seasons.
About the Dreamtime,
Uluru and the Snake-people, 
how terrible things happen
if ancient laws are violated.
Her voice is eerie,
as if from deep in the earth,
it resonates like the long vowels
of a didgeridoo.
 
Then one woman, feeling movement
in the spinifex beneath her,
springs to her feet.
Cheeky blighter, she says,
and with sleight of hand
flings a snake into the air,
a Brown, writhing—its flat head
flaring against the cobalt sky.
Now their laughter
swims through the coolabah trees,
fingers the reeds
like a cool breeze.
 
A hawk is hovering high up,
too far away,
like me to feel that kind of belonging
to this curious land.
 
 
 
Yesterday
After Judith Wright
 
A storm roiled in an icy blue-green front
and set the early light back an hour.
The willie wagtail, in his surplice and cassock,
retraced his steps to stillness, and the giddy wrens,
Blues with their Jennies, vanished.
 
After the bucketing, the earth squeezed
it’s citrus everywhere, the trees scintillated
a trillion suns. The dam receded under the sheen,
and the scent of pollens punctuated the silence.
I rested easy in my age. The wrens returned,
 
thirty or so, like wind-blown flowers on the lawn
and along the long, low sills, their rivals danced
in the glass, the pane thin between us.
Then, I vowed never to worry again
about this vertiginous life.
 
But, the dazzle dissolved too soon,
and things were as they had been before,
except the dam had filled, darker. From the stony rim
old-age stepped, with her palms extended,
and yesterday now blooms with a new flourish.
 
 

Mario Licon Cabrera translates poems by Michael Brennan

Written by mascara on . Posted in Translations.

 

Mario Licón Cabrera (México, 1949) has lived in Sydney since 1992. His third collection of poetry, La Reverberación de la Ceniza was publshed by Mora & Cantúa Editores in 2005. His work features in an architecture and poetry installation, Metaphors of Space, at this year’s Sydney Writers’ Festival. He has translated the poetry of Dorothy Porter, Judith Beveridge, Peter Boyle, J.S. Harry, Robert Adamson, amongst other Australian poets, into Spanish. His collection, Yuxtas, a bilingual collection (Spanish/English), written with the assistance of a grant from the Australia Council for the Arts/Literature Board. These poems are selected translations from Michael Brennan’s latest collection, Unanimous Night, which is short-listed in the NSW Premier’s Literary Award.

 

Carta a casa /2
 
Llegó Noviembre.
Meses más cáldos en gestación,
bandejas con tuberculos a la vista, tulipanes,
azafrán, lirios, robustas y doradas ofrendas
limpias de la negra tierra del norte,
nombres tan brillantes y extraños como un rezo:
Azul Delft, Juana de Arco, Remembranza,
nombres, los misterios ordinaries,
La señora de John T. Scheepers, Groenlandia,
Perico negrot, El récord del portero,
cada quien a la espera de ásperas manos
para regresarlos a la tierra oscura,
para ser enterrados
en paciente incertidumbre,
y esperar
hasta el fin del invierno.

Letter home

November already.
Warmer months finding form,
trays of bulbs laid out, tulips, crocus,
lilies, fat and golden offerings
brushed clean of black northern earth,
names bright and strange as prayer :
Delft Blue, Jeanne d’Arc, Remembrance,
names, the ordinary mysteries,
Mrs John T. Scheepers, Groenland,
Black Parrot, Doorman’s Record,
each waiting for weathered hands
to give them back to blind earth,
to bury them
in patient unknowing,
and wait
until winter’s end.

 

Carta a casa /3
 
Debo decirles, que no hay nada como el hogar.
Ninguno de ellos piensa que soy un forastero.
Me reciben en sus casas con manos
toscas y me brindan deliciosos manjares.
Después de cada comida, ellos frotan mis cejas
y mi barba, y secan las lágrimas
que por meses han corrido por mis mejillas
al viajar de pueblo en pueblo.
Me dicen que ellos son forasteros aquí,
y en la fresca atmósfera nocturna
cuelgan sus palabras por tal cosa,
entre la suava caricia de la barba
y los tiernos ojos del más viejo de ellos.
Me dicen que pronto me dejaran,
pro que en su ausencia debo seguir con los banquetes
que alguien vendrá y yo debo recibirlo,
no debo hablar de más, pero sí alimentar al invitado
y después secar sus lágrimas. Antes de irme debo decirle
que está en su casa, que él aquí no es un forastero.
Ellos dicen, ninguno de estos es forastero.
Ellos dicen, que esperaran por mí en el próximo pueblo
con sus manos gentiles y sus alegres ojos,
que el tren me llevará allá, y en el camino
podré escuchar el llanto del hombre viejo
y dejar a la tierna noche tocar mi rostro,
podré recordar los manjares caseros,
y esperar a que el silencio tenga lo suyo.
Dicen, cuando nos encontremos en el próximo pueblo,
ellos me lo explicaran todo. bare

Letter home

I should tell you, it’s nothing like home.
Not one of them thinks of me as a stranger.
They welcome me to their houses with rough
hands and feed me delicious feasts.
After each meal, they stroke my eyebrows
and beard, and dry the tears
that have run down my cheeks over months
travelling from town to town.
They tell me they are stranger here,
hanging their word for such things
in the cool night air, between the beard-stroking
and the young eyes of the oldest among them.
They say soon they will leave me,
but I am to keep feasting in their absence,
that someone will come and I must invite him in,
I must not say too much, but feed him and afterwards
dry his tears. Before I leave, I must tell him
this is his home now, that he is no stranger here.
They say, none of this is strange.
They say, they will wait for me in the next town
with their gentle hands and playful eyes,
that the train will take me there, and on the way
I can listen to the old man’s crying
and let the lightness of night find my face,
I can remember the feasts from home,
and wait for silence to have its fill.
They tell me, when we meet in the next town,
they will explain it all.

 

Carta a casa /4
 
Estás cerca,
tu aliento agitándose
entre los cedres
de ochocientos años de edad,
piedras
erosionadas
por cosas invisibles,
particulas de arena
y rocas,
flotantes
en la brisa,
la insignificancia
definiéndolo todo,
aquí donde un poeta
observó
nada
más
que el paso
de una estación,
y el aire otoñal
entibiando
el aliento,
y así
continuamos
nuestro ascenso lento,
un millar y
cuatrocientos
cincuenta escalones 
tallados en piedra
de esta montaña,
erigiéndose,
nombrando el templo
donde nos sentamos.
La vista,
el valle
que emerge,
hojas castañs
dadas
a un frío filoso y quemante,
el verde profundo
de los árboles añejos
en total quietud,
la brisaa ancestral
ahora corriendo veloz,
invisible y suave
a través de las piedras
suave a través
de la superficie
de nuestros ojos,
partículas
invisibles
interminablemente
borrando
cada
cosa.

Letter Home

You are close,
breath drawing
fast amongst
eight hundred
year old cedars,
stones
weathered bare
by invisible things,
specks of sand
and rock,
carried
on the breeze,
insignificance
shaping everything,
here where a poet
noted
nothing
more
than a season
passing
and autumn air
warmed
on breath
and so
we continue
our slow ascent
one thousand
four hundred
and fifty steps
of stone hewn
from this
mountain
rising
naming
the temple
where we sit
the view
the valley
appearing now
russet leaves
given
to a sharp cold fire
the deep green
of ancient trees
holding still,
the ancient breeze
running fast now
smooth and invisible
across stones,
smooth across
the surfaces
of our eyes,
invisible  
flecks
endlessly
erasing 
each
thing.

 

Carta a casa /6
 
La primavera empiiza su lento striptease.
La gente con menos ropa cada día.
 
Los pesados abriigos de lana dan paso al algodón,
a las líneas curvas de caderas, pechos y nalgas.
 
Escucho la música que me enseñaste,
esa que se ubica lentamente entre cada cosa.
 
Esas palabras extrañas –Gentileza, amistad,
afecto –todavía más extrañas al decirlas
 
en la lengua que se habla aquí.
Sentado percibo el oleaje de la gente,
 
a ratos saboreándolo con una sonrisa
o con el trunco lenguaje
 
que estoy aprendiendo, confíanza
y gentileza hablan por todas partes,
 
Atento escucho expresiones de mi país
transformándose en otro lenguaje
 
entre amigos conversando
amontonados, la percusión suave
 
de una pareja joven, protejiéndose
del crudo ambiente invernal.
 
Desplazo mis dedos a lo largo de palabras
como si cada palabra fuera una plegaria.

Letter Home

Spring starts its slow striptease.
Each day people are wearing less,

thick woollen coats give way to cotton,
irmer lines of hips, buttocks and breasts.

I listen for the music you taught me,
one that settles slowly between each thing.

Those strange words — kindness, friendship,
care — stranger  still  spoken

in the language spoken here.
I sit sensing the tide of people,

sometimes testing it with a smile
or with the broken language

I’m learning, trust
kindness speaks anywhere.

I listen carefully to idioms of home
rising in another language

between friends huddled 
in conversation, the gentle percussion

of a young couple sheltering
from late winter air.

I run my finger along words
as if each word was a prayer.

 

Ali Alizadeh translates a poem by Besmellah Rezaee

Written by mascara on . Posted in Translations.

 

Besmellah Rezaee (Hamta) was born in Afghanistan and is an Australian Afghan who currently studies a double degree in Law and International studies at the University of Adelaide. In addition, He works as a Publication officer for Karawaan Organization; he is the executive Director of “Sokhane-nau” magazine, and hosts a show in radio Adelaide called ‘Dialogue’ every Sunday. He is the founder and president of AATSA (Association of Australian Tertiary Students from Afghanistan) at the present and also works as an interpreter with Multilingua ltd. 

 

 

  

اینجا کابل است! 

          اقیانوس درد 

                      ساحل غم 

قصر دارالمان، کوه آسمایی، پل آرتن، زیارت سخی1 

 روزگاری مهد:   

                حاکمیت، غرور، محبت و نیایش بود!  

 سیاهی وهم آلود جهل 

بر کوی و برزن 

بر در و دیوار 

 بر آدم های این سر زمین   

                               سایه افکنده است 

کبوتران “سخی”2 رنگ باخته اند 

“افشار”3 هنوز بوی خون میدهد 

“ده افغانان”4 سینمای حرص و هوس شده است: 

اینجا یکی در پی لقمه نانی 

روزش آغاز و شبش پایان ندارد 

و دیگری در پی لحظه هوسی 

شبش آغاز و روزش پایان ندارد 

دریای کابل

               بی آب و ماهی و موج

                                        در سکوت ابدی محبوس شده است

 کودکان اینجا

               بعد از زمان خویش به دنیا آمده اند

                                                 آنها علم را در دست فروشی فرا میگریند

 “گودارد”5 هم مرده است

  تا اینبار نیوریالیزم را در کابل احیا میکرد.  

اینجا کابل است !  کابل!!!

 

                          

1 نام جاهای معروف در کابل

 2 سخی نام زیارتگاهی است در کارته سخی کابل

 3 افشار نام منطقه است در قسمت غرب کابل که در جریان جنگهای داخلی کشتار دسته جمعی و قتل عام مردم در آنجا صورت گرفت

 4 نام جایی در مرکز شهر کابل

 5 جین لوک گودارد نویسنده و فیلمساز معروف فرانسوی بود که در بنیان گذاری مکتب بنام آتیریزم و فرنچ نیو ویو سهم بارز داشت

 

 

This is Kabul!

The ocean of pain
                   the shore of sorrow
the Dar al-Man palace, the Asemani mountain, the Arten bridge, the Sakhi shrine (1)
a time of cradle:
                    there was sovereignty, pride, kindness and benediction!
Damn the war…
the fearful blackness of ignorance
                                                has cast a shadow
on every quarter and on every district
on the door and the wall
on the people of this land
The pigeons of the Sakhi have lost their colour  (2)
Afshar still reeks of blood (3)
Dah Afghanan has become a cinema of restriction and caprice (4)
Here a person seeking a bite of bread
never starts the day nor ends the night
and another seeking a moment of caprice
never starts the night nor ends the day
The seas of Kabul
                         without water or fish or waves
                                                           are exiled in eternal silence
The children here
                         have been born after their time
                                                           and will be educted in the future through hawking
Godard is also dead (5)
to once again revive neorealism in Kabul.

This is Kabul! Kabul!!!

[author’s footnotes]
(1) names of famous places in Afghanistan
(2)Sakhi is a name of a shrine in Kabul
(3)Afshar is a name of a district in west of Kabul where massacres took place during the civil war
(4)the name of a place in central Kabul
(5) filmmaker

 

 

Ali Alizadeh

 

Ali Alizadeh is an Iranian-born Australian writer. His books include the novel The New Angel (Transit Lounge Publishing, 2008); with Ken Avery, translations of medieval Sufi poetry Fifty Poems of Attar (re.press, 2007); and the collection of poetry Eyes in Times of War (Salt Publishing, 2006). The main themes of his writing are history, spirituality and dissent. His current projects include a nonfiction novel about the life of his grandfather (to be published in 2009) and, with John Kinsella, an anthology of Persian poetry in translation.

 

 

 

Priyadarshi Patnaik

Written by mascara on . Posted in Poetry.

Priyadarshi Patnaik (b. 1969) is a creative writer, painter, translator and photographer. A number of his poems and short-fiction have appeared in various journals outside and in India including Ariel, Oyster Boy Review, Hudson View, Melic Review, Still, Toronto Review, Kavya Bharati, Indian Literature and Muse India. His translations and critical writings on translation have appeared in Translation Today, Visva-Bharati Quarterly, Muse India and many edited volumes.

He has published two anthologies of poems, a critical work on Indian aesthetics and co-edited two volumes on Aging and Dying (Sage) and Time in the Indian Context (D K Printworld-in Press). He is presently editing a volume on Orissan Medieval Poets and writing a monograph on poet Achyutananda for Orissa Sahitya Akademi.

Patnaik is currently Associate Professor at the Department of Humanities & Social Sciences, IIT Kharagpur, where he teaches literature, communication and visual aesthetics. His research interests include Indian aesthetics, media & multimedia studies, visual & nonverbal communication, and translation.

 

My Daughter’s Shadow

Surprised they can touch
They stand still

They have so many colours
you will be amazed
by their depth texture
the shapes they take
like water
real-unreal
on the other side of light
somewhat shaped like your body
strapped to it

Yours is frozen in wonder
like a small still fish
and mine tired
smelling distant death

What else can I do
on this first meeting
this brief introduction
but say
“Look, this is your S-H-A-D-O-W!”

 

Night at Jagannatha  Temple

The star-printed wall-paper sky
flutters lightly against dark sandstones

The sleeping priests dream miracles
of holding shadow-of-time in hand

Lamps go out against temple walls
–  widows’ dirty white sarees

Silence wind of ages breathes
thousand whispers of dark blue sea

Ancient mouths of stones keep secret
A knife cuts the shout of life from death 

 

1. Jagannatha: 12th century AD Hindu temple in India

 

The Song

The old men look at the world like it is a memory
                               Ernesto Sabato

Your voice breaks over the harmonium
like an old leaf the colour of
autumn as the notes of thumri  fade
into the distance in their
ageless sadness the way
they did twenty years back

An old man is only a memory
of a life that has lived him
like wind passing through the
grooves of a drying leaf

Your voice breaks again
My memories play with your
notes – ancient rains that
course through the veins of the day
– my seventy year old memory that
has already lost me
 

thumri:  A form in Indian classical music

 

Kim Cheng Boey reviews “Eighth Habitation” by Adam Aitken

Written by mascara on . Posted in Reviews/Essays.

Eighth Habitation

by Adam Aitken

Giramondo Publishing
Poetry, Paperback, 144pp
ISBN 978-1-920882-46-4
$24.00
Publication April 2009


Reviewed by KIM CHENG BOEY 

 

            In “The Photo,” the concluding poem in Eight Habitation, the traveller-poet who has journeyed from the safe and familiar precincts of Sydney to the ravaged landscape of Cambodian history, poses a question: “To forget or not to, / to write or not to – therefore live – / to forgive the monster/ is this impossible question.” In parodying Hamlet, Aitken does not merely revisit the Theodor Adorno proposition about poetry being an impossibility after Auschwitz, but also broaches the role of remembering that Milan Kundera has framed so memorably: “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.” Eighth Habitation is a project in remembering; it revisits a personal and familial past, and then turns to the barbaric years of the Cambodian killing fields. The collection confronts the unspeakable without the false portentous gravitas that many bring to the subject; it does its work of remembering and witness with sensitivity, grace, humility and honesty, offering compelling records of the atrocities and sufferings in one of the most horrific nightmares of recent history.

            But to suggest that Aitken’s cogent, rich and varied collection is merely an addition to what Carolyn Forché calls the poetry of witness is to miss its many other resonances, its arresting range of subjects and tone. Doubtless the core of the collection revolves around Atiken’s Cambodian sojourn and is shadowed by the country’s violent history, but there are other vital thematic veins to the work, not least of which is the story of Aitken’s father. In fact, Aitken’s father’s Asian adventures in the first part of the collection prefigure and frame his son’s Asian sojourn. The book begins at home; the first of the triptych, aptly called “Broken/ Unbroken,” puts together a family portrait, albeit fragmented, mythologising a father whose exploits echo the colonial figures Aitken examines in the Cambodian section. The father poems recall “the salt ghost” who left home when Aitken was thirteen, retracing his career in the army, and his travels through Asia in the 1950s. “The Fire Watchers: A Memoir” address the poet’s brother but tells of the family’s disintegration, and his mother burning all his father’s books. Out of the ruins of the family, Aitken has salvaged photographs, and “the narratives refine themselves with each passing year.” He follows his father as he “bargained with a waif at Changi/ for 13 postcards” and recreates his antics as he “danced, quite pissed, in women’s lace/ then swapped the Major’s lucky digger hat/ for a set of Dutch clogs.”

            In “Archive” Aitken reconstructs his father’s Asian travels in the form of a travel journal. The son takes on the father’s voice here, giving a shorthand account of his encounters. Here Aitken senior is portrayed something of a ladies’ man; the poem is strewn with allusions to dalliances with local women, like Eleanor Kwong, “a commercial artist at Cathay Ltd,” Noël Bulke, the Anglo-Indian daughter of the Pakistani Ambassador, Edith Atkinson, “daughter of a Thai-Malaysian and Dutch mother,” a host of taxi dancers and “Singapore models.” Charming, irresistible, Aitken’s father seems interested in the East only as a site for sexual fantasy/ adventure, and cares little for Asian culture and politics. But this Orientalist exterior belies a complex mind and history, the flamboyant representations ironically hinting at a father whose contradictions the son is trying to apprehend without judgement.

             Aitken senior’s adventures pave the way for his son’s Asian journey in the next two sections, his imperialistic/ colonial attitude contrasting with his son’s more sensitive explorations. Also, the hybrids that Aitken senior flirted with reflect his son’s complex make-up. Aitken, like Edith Aitkinson, is a hyphenated person, the product of an Anglo-Australian father and Thai mother; a diasporic childhood lived in London, Bangkok and Malaysia has resulted in multi-locale attachments and a shifting and complex sense of belonging. It is perhaps a need to articulate and affirm his transnational identity, to connect the Asian, and Anglo-Australian strands that impels the journeys in the collection. To this end the poems in the transitional section “Crossing to Lake Toba,” located in Cairns, Malaysian Indonesia, can be seen as metaphorically and geographically negotiating the liminal spaces between Australia and Asia. “Kuta Diary” reverberates with the Bali bombing and “For Effendy, Emperor of Icecream” is a tongue-in-cheek look at Wallace Stevens, globalisation, tourism, and the interaction between tourist and native: “And home we went to ‘Saving Private Ryan’/ on your new DVD.” Beguiling, observant, these poems reveal Aitken’s attentive eye for details and the nuances of cross-cultural interaction, his natural warmth and empathy, his aliveness to the Other, and a quiet humour that offers a light counterpoint to the heavier themes. “Cairns,” the last poem in this section, provides an engaging portrait of Aitken’s mother, giving her a voice as she recounts her migrant story. Aptly her Thai origin steers the collection to the ravaged landscape of Indochina in the next section.

             The Cambodian poems grapple with wreckage left by years of war. “A Map of Cambodia” gives a synoptic survey of the country’s traumatised history and scarred landscape: “Magenta for bombed areas, /beaches named after hotels/ islands sold off to foreigners.” In quick effective strokes, Aitken captures the tide of changes sweeping across Phnom Penh, the signs of the nouveau riches, the gap between them and those still in the grip of poverty and the aftermath of war. He captures the precarious balance between destruction and recovery tellingly; while the capitalist developments, the multinational takeover of Cambodia betoken healing and movement forward, in reality they constitute a neo-colonialism that is partitioning and destroying the country in ways not different from the plunder of French colonialism. A new Cambodia is rising from the ashes of the past, eager to forget the past and embrace its capitalist future: “Under one map there’s another/ rising on the tide/ as the pain recedes.”  

             Aitken possesses a photographic eye alert to the telling instants and details. “Ruins” gives revealing snapshot:

In  Phnom Penh a mountain of junked bicycles
is a monument to Welcome!
but Siem Reap’s giant preying mantis
toting an AK-47
at the Foreign Correspondents Club
counts as art.

            Casual, understated, the observations get to the heart of the matter with arresting vividness: “Here, cows know more about road safety/ than townsfolk selling photocopied/ books on genocide.” Even clichéd images of the Vietnam War can attain cinematic clarity:

A woman sheltering under a rattan mat
from a thunderous downdraft of Hueys
by the banks of the Mekong
her last recollection of home.

              In “S21” Aitken gives a virtual tour of the genocide museum where the Khmer Rouge exterminated 20 000 men, women and children. Unflinchingly the poem delivers the images in all their stark brutality:

Blood and rust melded together
in the springs of an old French style bed base.
An old cartridge case shit can.
Samplers of jumbled DNA,
in a room of ragged cast-offs.

              The fragmentary images address headlong twentieth-century life in extremis; the connection between the two holocausts is inserted subtly: “Someone who’d been to Belsen/ had written ‘Justice’ in the visitor’s book.” Aitken lets the artefacts stand as evidence for what happened, avoiding the pathos and sentimental catharsis that popular representations of Holocausts like Schindler’s List peddles.

            In perhaps the most powerful of Cambodian poem, “The Wearer of Amulets,” the poet meets “an old boy soldier” who reveals the secret of how he survived with the help of an amulet: “a desiccated human foetus/ cut from the uterus of a woman/ pregnant three months.” Here again Aitken reveals an ability to weave splintered lyric narrative and social observation. There is an engaging sense of kinship and empathy with the survivors, a respect for what the poet can perceive but not understand. Other memorable poems in this section include “Dear Henri,” which offers a critique of French colonialism in Indochina, “Pol Pot in Paris,” which suggests again the tenuous line between culture and barbarism, and the memorable “The Photo” that this review began with.

            Eighth Habitation, as the title suggests, is a sojourn in purgatory, a journey through liminal zones where questions of self, the past, pain and suffering find expression in poems of lyric grace and compassion. If there is any flaw at all, it is its generosity in offering so much; one feels that there are a few poems that could have been omitted to make a more compact and coherent collection. But the reader shouldn’t complain; it is a rich collection that yields many pleasures and insights upon re-reading. The poems conduct their quest, ask the necessary questions in an honest, unpretentious, intelligent, self-effacing way; they inhabit and explore difficult thematic territories and  have much to communicate to us of the complexities of travel and cross-cultural communication, of a fascinating family history, and of the ineffable experiences of loss, death, and healing.

 

 

Cameron Lowe

Written by mascara on . Posted in Poetry.

Cameron Lowe lives in Geelong and works as a plasterer. His writing has appeared in Island, Meanjin, The Age & The Best Australian Poetry 2007 (UQP). Throwing Stones at the Sun, a chapbook of his poems was published by Whitmore Press in 2005. He is currently undertaking postgraduate study at The University of Melbourne.

 

 

Fins

for Alice

Deferring to wind & water a sort of swimming
begins, an allowance for flotsam on the tides of memory,
ambit lights glowing in the midnight depths,
slivers of silver teasing at the edges of sight.
 
             To be alone, then,
moonlight playing upon the sea’s skin.

Thinking scales, a child’s game of spindly fins,
the past rising toward its surface of familiars,
the things we are, in this darkness,
& the things we are not,
the dried thing we found on the tide line,
going a little green about the gills.

There will always be this gentle stirring,
this need to hold onto something
even as it changes shape, the little fish’s lullaby,
or the siren song amid the storm,
swimming in a music that breaks upon no shore.

 

Breathing
 
‘at the shores of the afternoon’
                                       Nick Riemer
 
Between painted lips,
or deeper inside the body,
closer to the chest’s cavity,
 
listening to her swimsuit swelling,
fingers a clutch of leaves
swaying in the summer breeze,
 
hands smoothly-shaped stones,
the diaphragm contracting,
even now that eyes are closed.
 
Seashells, she might say suddenly,
half-asleep in the sun, dreaming
perhaps, of distant, pebbled shores,
 
little waves rising,
crumbling, repeating again & again,
meddling with memory, the map
 
of her back itself an ocean,
glistening with oil,
under the long echoing blue sky.

 

 

Gina Forberg

Written by mascara on . Posted in New Worlds.

 
Gina Forberg is an elementary school teacher in Westport, Connecticut.  She received her Masters of Arts Creative Writing at Manhattanville College.  Her work has appeared in The New Delta Review, The Mochila Review, Slant Magazine, Blueline Press, Squaw Valley Review, Anderbo Magazine,

 

 

The Turn

Maybe there is gratitude in the map
quest that steered us wrong, that allowed
us to meet our mate when we missed
the church, that prevented the accident
at mile 54. Perhaps we found our dream
house, a new favourite restaurant.  
What if we returned to the simple scribble
on the page, the loops, curves of a writer’s
hand, the elegance of slant, the enjambment
of words. I’d  like to believe he is
intrigued by the white space, cares less
about cross-outs, erasures, knows not
what direction he is going.  For us
to worry about diction, syntax,
punctuation is to misplace the emotion,
to resist the turn we need to make.
The starts, the stops are what drive
our engines.  The setting aside restores us.
If we are willing to lose ourselves
in the extra miles we may be surprised
at our destination. If we are lucky,
a reader will follow close behind.

 

The Conditions and Events of The Winter Olympic Games as a Metaphor for Sex

i.  
Snowfall must be sufficient enough to guarantee beyond question a heavy cover
during the prelimary practice.

ii.
Altitude should be sufficient to guarantee snowfall without unduly affecting the
respiration of the athletes.
                                
iii.
If you are going to be a skiier choose freestyle. It has no restrictions.

iv.
It is important for a woman to use her hips during the turns in the downhill slalom.

v.
In classic freestyle, skiiers use the traditional straight-striding technique and do not
deviate from the parallel tracks.

vi.
The word “hockey” derives itself from the French word “hocquet” which refers to
crooked stick.

vii.
Skaters must wear rubber caps to reduce the amount of wind resistance.

viii.
In the luge there is no rule that says a doubles team must comprise members of the
same sex, but traditionally, men have ridden together with the larger man lying on top
for a more aerodynamic fit.

ix.
The luge event is designed to reward consistency, endurance and ability to withstand
pressure, particularly on the second day.

x.
In curling, the stone moves toward a series of concentric circles. The object is to get
the stone as close to the centre of the circle as possible.

xi.
In the biathalon relay each team member has two firing sequences and is allowed
three extra bullets to hit five targets.

xii.
Location changes every two years so make sure the conditions are conducive to your
specified event.

 

Weam Namou

Written by mascara on . Posted in New Worlds.

Weam Namou was born in Baghdad, Iraq as a minority Christian, and came to America at age ten. The author of three novels, she studied poetry in Prague and screenwriting at MPI (Motion Picture Institute of Michigan). She is also the co-founder and president of IAA (Iraqi Artists Association). Her articles and poetry has appeared in national and international publications. http://www.pw.org/content/weam_namou

 

 

 

 

A Childhood in Iraq

Sun shines over a mélange of
green grass and white snow,
like a lime flavored slurpee.
Snow in rarely detected in Baghdad.

Through the window a squirrel
passes by, nibbles at the cereal
I’ve left for it on the deck.
Pets are not encouraged in Iraq.

A lunch of hot tea and a cold slice
of pepperoni pizza I prepare for me,
without removing the pepperoni.
Pork is not halal in the Arabic world.

I listen to the poetic Quranic verses on TV
even though I belong to a Christian minority
who still speak Aramaic, called the Chaldeans.
They’re being persecuted in their native land as we speak.

All praise is due to Allah, Lord of the Worlds…
the imam leads a prayer
I remember the paper bag of baby green apples
my father used to bring home for us.

My younger brother and I tied
their stems to a string,
treated the apples like yoyos.
We had no toys back then, nor swings.

We built play houses out of cardboard boxes
pretended pillows were our dolls,
pots and utensils our musical instruments.
In Iraq, today, children can’t afford to be that simple.

Didn’t need anyone to read to us a bedtime story
aunts and uncles, cousins and neighbors,
were our heroes and villains.
Now, terrorists and gangs rule that part of the earth. 

 

America

I talk about you, as many others do,
sticking labels such as arrogant and gullible
over your name, like stamps over a large Christmas package.

You dress me with possibilities,
I try on this and that outfit of different colors and sizes,
meanwhile focusing on your limitations.

You do not reprimand me for my verbal thoughts,
rather, you listen, weigh the options and consider
whether what I have to say is worthy of action.

Oftentimes, I even receive applause
for pointing out your negativities and idiocies.
In return, you remain true to the First Amendment you’ve provided.

You’ve allowed me to take a deep look at your weaknesses
and in turn caused me to appreciate your strength and integrity.
That’s real balance, the yin and yang, of our planet.

While I love the country of my birth, of Iraq,
where I was blessed with the best childhood,
I must admit, had I remained there, as an adult,
Freedom of Speech is something I may never have experienced.

 

Nathanael O’Reilly

Written by mascara on . Posted in New Worlds.

A dual Australian-Irish citizen, Nathanael O’Reilly was born in Warrnambool and raised in Ballarat, Brisbane and Shepparton. He has lived in England, Ireland, Germany, Ukraine and the United States, where he currently resides. His poetry has appeared in numerous journals, including Antipodes, Postcolonial Text, Transnational Literature, Prosopisia, Blackmail Press and Southern Ocean Review.

 

 

The Hills of Bendigo
For Sean Scarisbrick

We spent the summer of ninety-two
In the hills of Bendigo
Living in a colonial house
Replete with a croquet lawn,
A ballroom, servant’s quarters,
A wine cellar, an in-ground pool
And a deep, dark verandah
Overlooking an acre of grounds
Scattered with pine needles,
Stone benches and rose bushes.

Home from uni on summer holidays,
We lived on my parent’s charity.
After sleeping past midday
In a room with burgundy velvet curtains
And foot-thick stone walls,
Days were spent swimming in the pool
Seven steps and a leap from our beds,
Reading Eliot, Salinger and Hardy
In the shade on the verandah,
Writing long letters to girls
We thought we knew and loved,
Listening to U2, Van Morrison,
And Hunters & Collectors, always
Getting a kick out of the line
“Way out back in Bendigo.”

When the heat was bearable
We walked over the hills
Along winding goat-track streets
Left over from the goldrush,
Discovering tiny pubs,
No more than front rooms
Of miner’s cottages,
Occupied by old blokes
In op-shop three-piece suits
Perched precariously
On vinyl bar stools.
Old Jimmy fished a battered
Harmonica from his waistcoat
Pocket, shook out the saliva
And puffed out a wheezy tune,
His narrow shoulders hunching
As the condensation slid
Down the side of his pot of VB.

Some days we walked to the mall,
After passing the oval, the Art Gallery,
The high school and the park,
Browsed countless racks of CDs
We couldn’t afford at Brash’s,
Left our sweaty fingerprints
On Thrasher and Rolling Stone
Under the disapproving glare
Of the Chinese newsagent,
Took refuge in the Public Library
Where we flipped through LPs,
Discovering Klaus Wunderlich
And His Amazing Pop Organ Sound.

Evenings were spent at home
Drinking my parents’ wine,
Eating thick slabs of cheese
Grilled on toast while watching
Day-night cricket matches on telly.
Or, if the Austudy hadn’t run out,
Drinking Carlton Draught downtown
In the Shamrock Hotel or the Rifle Brigade,
Playing pool and the jukebox,
Bullshitting about the great things
We would do after finishing uni,
What we would do for a living,
Where we would live,
Where we would go on holidays,
Which girls we would sleep with.

At night we wandered through the hills
Drinking from the silver bladder
Ripped from a box of Coolabah Riesling,
Unable to sleep in the January heat.
We took turns waiting on the swings
In the park across from the Milk Bar,
While you or I made reverse-charge
Calls from a Telecom phone box
With shattered glass and AC/DC graffiti.
Afterwards, we went back to the house
For more grilled cheese on toast,
More chilled wine, and conversations
That lasted into the early hours
And echo through the years.

 

 

Anushka Anastasia Solomon

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Born in 1963, a Hindu in Malaysia, Anushka Anastasia Solomon left for the United States as a teenager to study journalism. She returned to Malaysia with a B.A (Creative Writing/Education), envisioning change of the race and religion based Malaysian system of Education. Her poem, “13 Ways of Looking at Malaysia” inspired by Wallace Stevens, which appears in Asia Literary Review Autumn 2008, articulates that vision. The Malaysian government, then and now, frowns upon her ideas. In 1998, due to intolerable family violence and persecution after her mother’s premature death, Anushka, her husband, Ben Solomon, and son David Marshall converted to Christianity, fled Malaysia and immigrated to the United States.

The author of two poetry chapbooks, Please, God, Don’t Let Me Write Like A Woman, (Finishing Line Press, 2007) and The Hindu and The Punk, (Pudding House Press 2009), Anushka’s work is featured by Amnesty International at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, Scotland, 2007, 2008 and 2009. She lives in beautiful Evergreen, Colorado. (www.atthewindow.us)

 

 

Recipe for Success –Slumdog Millionaire

I buy the Bollywood look in Wal-Mart
Gold hoop earrings with yellow beads
$1.50 marked down from 5 US Dollars
Decorate my years shrivel the sari to a
A skirt I buy at Forever 21
$10.00 marked down from more than that
With my skin the color of cinnamon bark
I dress up for a lark. I make naan and
Have An American friend photograph
Me by the Yellow Barn
The lentils are
Cooking slowly, I will add some spinach
And prepare to garnish the dish with some
Dried red chillies
That will crackle in my frying pan
And on your tongue, I will hum a Hindi
Song and you will never know
That perhaps
Like you
I do not know how to live
In a slum.

 

 

Cooking A South Indian Curry From Memory

1.

I slice tender red beef, the cold silver blade
Of the knife creating an everglade
Collide worlds in a colander
Demarcate the days on the calendar
Take a cutting from the past
It is not my intention to aghast
Those who consider the cow holy
I just want to cook a curry boldly
Solely
from memory.

2.

Listen. Here in America,
They tell me– the poet – that the onion
an apple and the potato
all have the same taste.

That the differences in flavor
Are caused by their smell.

Listen. Here they prove
these things
Science, Surveys, Studies.

I can’t argue with their facts.
I don’t. The facts mount this
case from Malaysia
And ride it, like a show horse,
around and around until I am
ground into the spices
bleeding the truth in my marrow bones
for William Butler Yeats

and this South Indian Curry I am cooking from
memory because I am
ornery

3.

To prove the onion, an apple
and the potato the same

They say – pinch your nose
Take a bite.

They will all taste sweet.
Try it!

Booze, women and writing.
All the same.

4.

I remember my Hindu father swinging a bag
Of goat’s intestines
For my mother to cook, she ran water
In the sink
Obediently washing the insides of a goat
Wrinkling her nose in distaste
Listen. Charles Bu-cow- ski wrote a poem
About a Mexican girl
Who washed his private part
With a rag

5.

Contemporary American men’s poetry
is that sultry
the Buddhist monks who conducted  
Bu-cow-ski’s funeral rites
must set their sights a tad higher
for women. Our gravestones
ought to read: “Don’t Try”
like his.

Alternatively:
 “Don’t Cry”.

The more things change
The more women I find

On the streets – like loose change.
They, like all things, stay the same.

6.

Or am I cooking this up from memory
Mixing it up with chicory

Using it to pound a point in
Like ginger and garlic

In a medley of flavors
For a variety of favors

Like the Thai and Indonesian women
With splayed toes

Who for a few bhat or rupiah
Rub the stress off the backs

Of the missionaries selling Jesus
Vying for a chance to stand

Beside Bill Gates? Accolades.

7.

I ought to go back to cooking the
South Indian curry from memory.

Don’t use beef. The cow is holy.
Remember?

Use chicken. Hold your nose.
And all the horses in Colorado.

It would be a good idea to hold
Your tongue as well, my belle.

Show some cleavage at Christmas.
And don’t joke about mangoes.

Or tell them that wearing a sari
And exposing the navel is asking

to get raped. Save the juicy parts
for when the Guests go away.

..unless they stay.

8.

Then you can tell them the recipe.
How you stand poised on the edge of the precipice

Cooking South Indian curry from memory
Listening for some inner harmony

Orange and purple bougainvillea
Climbing over the balcony like all

The idealized Tamil lovers
Of the silver screen

Your love of all things
falling unrequited

like the bougainvillia
Bunga kertas, paper flowers

Your nail polish, the new indigo blue of the sky.

 

Anthony Lawrence

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Anthony Lawrence’s most recent book of poems Bark (UQP 2008) was shortlisted for the Age Book of the Year Awards and the Judith Wright Calanthe Award. He is currently completing a PhD on the poetry of Richard Hugo, and a book-length poem The Welfare of My Enemy is forthcoming. He lives in Newcastle.

 

 

Your Letters

I can’t smell the oil-stained deck ropes
on the last boat leaving              
the last town of the Cinque Terra,

or see the highlights in your hair
as you pass the Roman wall in Lucca,
but I can see you’re in a hurry –
 
the broken flourishes of your thinking
as you run for a train, the word because
reduced to bc in all your correspondence.
             
I can’t see you there, in that postcard
version of your dreaming, overseas
or when you returned to a life
 
doubled by keeping your options open
like a wound gone septic from neglect.
Today I see your name on my calendar.
 
Your birthday will come and go,
untroubled by gift or word, though under-
scored by this certainty: lost in the poor
 
terrain of your grammar, you worked
a moulting brush through muddy pigments
to abbreviate me.

 

 

The Sound of a Life
 
In frames of elapsed time
and contractions of deep sea light,
an open water dance    
between science and bivalve
is bloodflow and the muted sound
of a life hinged and weighted
to its own design.
Behind the shelled meniscus
of a marine biologist’s faceplate,
where assessments of fact and beauty
play across her eyes, under pressure
she hears the blue mazurka
of loss and non-attachment
and she outbreathes what remains
in her tank to understand it.

 

 

 

Anca Vlasopolos

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Anca Vlasopolos was born in Bucharest, Rumania. Her father, a political prisoner of the Communist regime in Rumania, died when Anca was eight. After a sojourn in Paris and Brussels, at fourteen she immigrated to the United States with her mother, a prominent Rumanian intellectual and a survivor of Auschwitz. Anca is a professor of English and Comparative Literature at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. Her poetry collection is titled Penguins In A Warming World. Anca is also the author of an award winning novel, The New Bedford Samurai and the memoir No Return Address: A Memoir of Displacement.


 

 

Wedded Bliss

gold bands glint
over a plastic bucket
where two pairs of hands
lovingly
gut
fish no bigger
than the hands

this could be a portrait
of marriage
man and woman
in harmonious
complicity
fish gored bleeding
from the side

 

Above the Bird’s Eye View

winter this year
sprang
a lynx
from still full-leaved branches

huge paws of wind to bat us
should we raise eyes toward light
or sigh at the thin horizon
arriving earlier each day

in this desolation in drab and gray
i look from a second-story window
see him—olive camouflage
for a pulsebeat unzipped

his rich summer gold
streaking
sun bullet
bursting through lynx dominion

 

Nabina Das

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Nabina Das lives two lives, shuttling between USA and India. Her short stories have been published in Inner Voices, a contest-winning collection of fiction (Mirage Books, India), and The Cartier Street Review. A 2nd prize winner of an all-India Poetry Contest organized by HarperCollins-India and Open Space, her poems appear in Quay, Pirene’s Fountain, Shalla Magazine, Kritya, The Toronto Quarterly, The Cartier Street Review, Maintenant 3 (Three Rooms Press), Muse India, Danse Macabre, The Smoking Book anthology, Liberated Muse anthology, Mad Swirl and elsewhere. A poetry commentary and a poetry book review also appear in Kritya and The Cartier Street Review respectively. A 2007 Joan Jakobson fiction scholar from Wesleyan Writers’ Conference, and a 2007 Julio Lobo fiction scholar from Lesley Writers’ Conference, Nabina was Assistant Metro Editor with The Ithaca Journal, Ithaca, NY, and has worked as a journalist and media person in India for about 10 years in places as diverse as Tehelka.com, Down To Earth environmental magazine, Confederation of Indian Industries, National Foundation for India and The Sentinel newspaper. She has published several articles, commentaries and essays during her tenures. An M.A. in Linguistics from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, her other interests are theater and music. Formally trained in India classical music, she has performed in radio and TV programs and acted in street theater productions in India. She blogs at www.fleuve-souterrain.blogspot.com and freelances when not writing.

 

 

Aleph

The first sound uttered is always forgotten
Possibly it is never even a word. Just
An interjection that derives from faraway
Fears or an anxious rhythm of speech.
The first sound can be heard quite clear
When groans and grunts are taken care
Of with mighty sweep of authorized
Hands that also stifle songs and smiles.
If you were a baby or a doddering pair
Of legs, your first word would be despair
Not a calligrapher’s delight in dusky ink
Blinking away in the heliotrope night.

In one little fable the first letter was
Meant to be the first word of wonder
But no one wrote it down and so later
The ocean took it with fish and dead matter.

 

 

Living Room Homily

Women talking in high voice
Tingling streets
An indolent afternoon in the library
– All that glides up to whisper:
How we love life

After poems are read
Blood is spilled
Bee stings are removed
From unresponsive arms

We can measure up to reality
As though it’s a challenge
We can read minds
As though it’s an ancient art, revived

Furry dogs bustling
Smothering fleur du soir
A fleeting glance after remembrance
– Nothing that stops enchantment,
To say we love life

After you come back home
Hobble in the pantry
After newsprint withers
Becomes compost in the bin

I can clamour under the bright light
Straighten my pleats and scarf
I can wake up before dawn
As though night never came.

Dilip Chitre

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Dilip Chitre n 1938 in Baroda, India. Studied in Mumbai. After graduating in 1959, taught English for three years in Ethiopia, returning to Mumbai in 1963, worked as a journalist, columnist, commentator, editor. Was Fellow of the International Writing Program, University of Iowa, Iowa City, USA from 1975 to 1977, Back in India, made films, painted, roamed around. Now live in Pune, Maharashtra for the last 25 years. Published 30 books in all, 5 in German translation, Won many prizes, honours, and awards. Travelled all over Europe, parts of Asia, and Africa.

 

 

 

 

 

The Ninth Breakfast: Astrological Forecast

 

Sometimes a mere sausage portends,
Waiter, the coming shadow

Of Saturn. Sad days begin
Insignificantly. But sinister days
Foretell their ways. The innocent sausage in one’s plate
Grows into a cobra. And one knows
That the tables have begun
To turn.
On a Saturday you never
Get horseshoes for breakfast.
But a severe exhortation
In the morning’s editorial
On the duties of a citizen.
Here, where the cows are sacred,
And pigs taboo, a starving mob
Glares at your subversive sausage
Whose shape, moreover, is an implicit
Insult to Shiva’s phallus,
And you choke because you know
One man
Is another man’s breakfast.
 
No thanks. I’ll only have tea and toast.

 

 

 

Absence From Myself

 

I am emptying my shelves and my drawers
I cannot cope with their contents
Any longer. They connect with a past
That hardly seems mine though known to me.
The shelves contain books, of course,
And some of them go a long way
Into a memory not exactly my own
Where my treacherous roots lie
Into humanity’s favourite myths.
 
The drawers contain documents, notes,
Unfinished manuscripts, faded photographs,
Letters, memorabilia, and possessions
That could be called mere fetishes.
Alternatively, one could call it heritage.
My father’s dead and my only son died too
Within just a short span separating them
And I would be someone sandwiched
Between them—a piece of living history
Between two dead ends.
 
I am the one that has endured and survived
Two ends of history and the emptiness
Of shelves and drawers and largely
Unwritten books, abandoned poems,
Unfinished paintings, unrealised films,
Spaces more empty than filled,
Occupied and left.
 
Spaces, spaces, spaces.
Time leaves no detail untouched
And time takes all details away.
My ancestor’s gone and so is my successor.
 
That leaves me no space but
Here and now, no room to negotiate,
Not even an edge to fall off from.
I am exquisitely here and now
And where I never before was
Nor ever will be.
Moreover, this is not an end.

 

 

 

From Moscow To Leningrad (1980)

 

From Moscow to Leningrad
I was travelling through a three-dimensional notebook
The notebook had mile after mile of snow
The notebook had railway tracks
Close to my chest there was a broken
Anthill the size of a woman
 
Close to my chest were eighteen she-cobras
Close to my chest was powdered turmeric
My body flung northwards
Pointed to the Pole
 
Whose sins were washed out by that journey
Whose wounds bled away in that journey
There were characters written in the notebook
Spreading like fire through the snow
In the shape of a spark.

 

 

 

Underneath the Chandeliers Hung by Stalin

 

Underneath the chandeliers hung by Stalin
People swarm to buy bread
And at a distance stand the churches of Christ
Detached and compassionate
 
Underneath this Russian snow there could be
Several flowering plants of poetry
Countless thorny solitudes
The bones of former citizens

 

 

 

On the Way to Petrograd/Leningrad

(—for Irina )

Time turns to ice
Boots fall into a vanishing line
The grief of black living eyes
Lies hidden in the groin
Ointment on a tender spot
Graft on an alien branch
In the closed car of a train
Disoriented copulation
The ice of coals shovelled into
A couple of hours of intimacy
The rail track is refreshed by
Wheels speeding over it
From Moscow to Leningrad
 
You commit adultery and it’s a torture
And this Express goes
Right up to Finland
Towards the land of White Nights
 
The tall ghost of Peter the Great
The solid buildings of the navy
The palaces, the squares, the canals,
The innocent eyes of Mandelstam
Pushkin’s love affair
Lenin’s speech
Dostoevsky’s vigil in terror
And the European masterpieces
In the Hermitage
Before the Revolution and after
All this is eternal
The Great War and the great peace
 
The pleading breasts
Of a starved woman
Her thighs gone awry
Vodka dripping over her shoulders and body
And as a frightened sparrow hits a wall in its search for a window in the dark
Her breath enters my nostrils and my mouth as she gasps for air
I do not dare to write a poem
On all this
Our own relatives will become the angels of death
To exile us into Siberia

 

 

 

 

Ali Alizadeh

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Ali Alizadeh is an Iranian-born Australian writer. His books include the novel The New Angel (Transit Lounge Publishing, 2008); with Ken Avery, translations of medieval Sufi poetry Fifty Poems of Attar (re.press, 2007); and the collection of poetry Eyes in Times of War (Salt Publishing, 2006). The main themes of his writing are history, spirituality and dissent. His current projects include a nonfiction novel about the life of his grandfather (to be published in 2010) and, with John Kinsella, an anthology of Persian poetry in translation.  

 

 

 

 

A Familial Rennaissance
for Saf

 

Like the Italian one, my family’s rebirth
spawned masterpieces, caused a breakdown

 

like the civil wars of the Reformation
with few victors, countless casualties. Mine

 

a kind of persecution: bullied, beaten
at school for being a ‘dirty terrorist’ and

 

my resurrection stunted, my ‘new
start’ delayed. Immigration was more than

 

traumatic, abusive, for my father: defeat
and capitulation at the hands of employers

 

dreading a foreign-educated ‘wog’ without
‘acceptable’ Western work history. Mum’s

 

reshaping as an ‘Aussie’ almost aborted:
she returned to Iran (temporarily, it turned out)

 

when denied recognition of her degrees
by the union. I took up drugs; became a drunk

 

to forget the bullies, banish from my ears
the din of my parents’ jousts in the kitchen. But

 

my sister, a triumphant genius, the Leonardo
of this renaissance tale: the death of her Iranian

 

identity, followed by calm gestation – caring
daughter in the crossfire between workless father

 

and alcoholic brother – and then, yes, successful
delivery: a modern young woman, her alacrity

 

salary, property, paid holidays, etc. In photos

her posture, an homage to Michelangelo’s David.

 

 

 

A Sufi’s Remonstrance

 

I’m sick of You. Your magnificence
precipitates mental pain, ethical

 

cramps. That You continue to shine
blinds, asphyxiates, twists the sinews

 

of my words. How dare You bewitch
in an aeon like this? 14 year-old

 

Iraqi girl kidnapped, raped, burnt alive
by American servicemen; Palestinian

 

toddler’s head pulped by the shrapnel
of Israeli bombs; sleepy Israeli civilian

 

shattered by rubble while drinking tea; not
to forget the forgotten diseased, starved

 

billions expiring in the squalid ghettos
of ‘globalisation’. Could You possibly

 

justify the garish brilliance of your
intractable, effervescent spring

 

as rivers shrivel and soil turns saline
due to pitiless ‘progress’? Or the candle

 

of compassion in this starless night
of cyclic hatred? I honestly can’t help

 

my revulsion at Your volition to remain
prodigious, enchanting, Beloved. So what

 

if You discharge life, if my life is nothing
but a valley along the trajectory of return

 

to You? You flaunt the ecstasies of Union
and transcendence when reality demands

 

outrage and obduracy. Why won’t You
let me loathe my fellow creatures instead

 

of being mesmerised by Your allure? It turns
my stomach, aches my intellect, since I hope

 

and even occasionally smile, sleep and dream
in spite of the calamities, because of You.

 

Dubai

I can’t pretend
there’s beauty to exhume

from these slabs
concrete and sandstone

planted in the sand
funereal totems. I can’t

harmonise with the drill
fracturing the boulders

beneath the desert
puncturing the landscape

holes to insert
pillars as foundation

for incipient towers
towards a veritable

concrete forest. What
palm trees remain, inspire

the outline of the artificial
island, beach resort

to A-list celebrities. Camels
happy and humanised

logos on T-shirts
at the gargantuan mall

the largest in the world
outside of USA. Burger King

and co. don’t clash
but complement the Arabic

kitsch. I can’t conjure
my gifts (meager

as they are) enough
to resemble this reality

in an aesthetically refined
string of words: only this

beveled cluster
of clauses and the like

summoned by a Colossus
of a place called Dubai.

 

 

Laksmi Pamuntjak: “Letters From Buru”

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Laksmi Pamuntjak is the author of two poetry collections, Ellipsis (one of The Herald UK’s Books of the Year 2005) and The Anagram; a treatise on violence and mythology entitled Perang, Langit dan Dua Perempuan (War, Heaven, and Two Women), and a collection of short stories, The Diary of R.S.: Musings on Art. Pamuntjak also translated and edited Goenawan Mohamad: Selected Poems and Goenawan Mohamad’s book of aphorisms under the title On God and Other Unfinished Things. She is also the co-founder of Aksara, a bilingual bookstore in Jakarta. Pamuntjak is currently at work on her first novel, The Blue Widow, about the historical memory of 1965. She has also recently been appointed a jury member of the Amsterdam-based Prince Claus Awards Committee.

 

Letters from Buru

 

— Dec. 1973                   

            Today I think of you like this star in the sky. Something that twinkles and fades, but always appears at the point of forgetting.

            I imagine you this weeping, pearly blue.

 

31 December 1973

Dearest—

            The year is drawing to a close and I am, again, cushioned at the base of some tree, watching yet another ketoprak. The others are spread out, huddled in their own unprepossessing bunches. Extension cords from the giant speakers not far from where I am sitting snake through the grass all the way to the stage; wow, aren’t we using a lot of electricity today.

            There is a gay feeling in the air. The place is suddenly an oasis of brilliant moonlit optimism suspended in a haze of laissez fare and we do not recognize ourselves. The sky is a canvas on which greedy gods are doodling. It may even be chilly but we are numbed to reality.

            As I told you earlier, it’s been a rather compassionate year. There can be as many as two, sometimes three shows a year, and the repertoire ranges from shamelessly banal to determinedly different. But most of the time these ketopraks are quite tedious.

            Most of the actors and musicians of tonight’s show came from Unit XIV Bantalareja. They’re a vain lot, I must add, always psyched up about themselves. They boast as many as half a dozen groups with a decidedly old Jakarta bent, one for lenong, one for orkes keroncong, one for irama Melayu—Bantala this, Bantala that, Bantala what’s-it. The motor is a group of Tangerang youth with a certain amount of bile about them, and a certain veiled disdain for the genteel sensibilities of the shadow puppet theatre, the wayang, so they can always be counted on for political fervour. They do stick to lifting only popular stories from Javanese history books, as they do now, but they really are not very imaginative. Short of ideological freedom, most of the stories are chosen for their anti-feudalism. It’s all about heroes and patriots. Great, mind-numbing stuff.

            (Being the unit closest to Namlea, these Bantalareja guys also get to look forward most to the giggling coastal girls.)

           Of course like all folk performances, the stories behind the screen are much more delicious, and for a few days during rehearsals fresh love was declared, new acts and allegiances were made, old friendships were broken. There is a sense of deepened reality to the air, precisely because laughter suspends disbelief. Such is the narcotic effect of art. But by tomorrow, all will be depleted and everybody will be slightly depressed.  

Bhisma

 

February-March, 1974

            It’s been a while since I’ve given food a thought. Every so often there will be “patients” coming to me with some minor grievance concerning the things they’ve eaten.

            Most prisoners on rice field duty look forward to getting their extra protein from catching the orong-orong that comes out and floats haplessly in water after they crush the soil in it. There are kelabangs too, a kind of crab-like spider, and of course, the easiest of all—lizards. The kelabang releases a bluish substance when it comes in contact with fire so often this gives those who consume it the most debilitating case of the runs. One has to admire their valor: we’re as hardy as they come, they always say, don’t know what plagues us this time. Still. Some have managed to get so sick they need to be transferred to the hospital in Namlea, the port city of Buru.

            Today a man was brought before me who had recently sought medication for kelabang poisoning. Only this time he was barely a man: it was clear that he’d been knocked about unconscious, with two stab wounds on his abdomen. I asked the people who’d brought him in what happened. They said he’d had diarrhea so severe that he had to—just absolutely had to—empty his bowels into the Wai Bini. Now there is an express rule in the penal colony that no one should empty their bowels into the river, because we rely on it for clean water. It is our only source.

            So of course they beat him up. And I feel awful, because he had sought treatment from me, and yet he had obviously mistrusted it (or me) not to have taken the tablets I’d given him.

Bhisma

 

—-, 1974

            It just dawned upon me, darling. About waiting, I mean. When we talk about waiting, we do not talk about a few hours, days, even months. It’s about reaching a point where you occasionally dare to wait, such as when you pick up a pen and a sheet of paper, see the first smile of a recovering patient, or meet a visitor who tells you “It’s still better to have a home than no home at all.”

           There is this man from Banten I visit from time to time. He believes I have a special power. When he first tried to point me to the fact, I dismissed him immediately. Don’t want to hear it, I said. I bet it’s something about my name. And if it is, then I already know about it. Don’t need a sage from black magic land to tell me that I will only die when I choose to. That yours, my love, will be the last face I see. But gradually I see what he means. There have been too many moments in which we as a collective would be beaten senseless for the error of another yet I have slowly come to realise that when it happens I do not feel any pain.

            I don’t feel it during interrogation either, which is really a mere excuse for torture. They say physical pain always mimes death, and each time pain is inflicted upon the body, it is a kind of mock execution. I try to conjure these things in my mind almost to elicit the tonal sensation of pain, if there is indeed such a thing, but I can’t. I can see what it does to my body, the gashes, the long, angry streaks, the swollen pus, and I can see what it is all about, the power game, the naked show of brute force. But I can’t summon the feeling.  

            It is an idle hour, and I have acquired it through sly machinations. Darkness now.

            My love. I have to take leave of you once more. 

Bhisma

 

—, 1974

Amba,

            I’ve learned to love the ocean because unlike the mountains I rarely see it. I often think of boating out instead of being boated in. I imagine the tremendous reefs under the water, the anemones my blind friends tell me are glued on them like jeweled mouths. Colour and poison they say are two sides of the same coin.

            Imagine, then: An island this precariously small, and yet one that refuses to be leveled down by anything – not even by the sweeping blue and fickle waves.

            You learn so much from people who in different parts of their lives have agreed to live on the coast. The three villages nearest to us are full of them. They are Butonese, and therefore not from around here, but they are happiest at sea. Every day they say to themselves tomorrow we might live another day. They feel the slightest threat in the sky, detect the ocean’s panic. Yet they sleep noiselessly and rise early as though to race dawn to another beginning. I’d like to take you with me to live by the ocean, if only to remind me of this thought where happiness knows itself.

Bhisma

 

(excerpts from the manuscript The Blue Widow: A Novel)

 

Sam Rutter: “Box Hill”

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Samuel Rutter is an undergraduate at the University of Melbourne. He lives in Brunswick West and has an ardent passion for all things Latin American.

 

 

 

 

 

Box Hill

The beer was sitting uneasily in my stomach. Carl had the window of the taxi down as far as it would go, letting the air hit him full in the face. We rounded the corner and made it halfway up Whitehorse Road before the meter ticked over and we had to tell the cab driver that this was as far as we could afford. He pulled over almost immediately and rounded up the figure, the doors still locked as Carl handed him some notes and I left sweaty coins on the dashboard. He could count it if he liked, it was all there. I thanked the driver, without thinking why, and Carl was already on the footpath heading towards a service station in the distance when I slammed the taxi door shut.
            Carl always got this way when he came back from his trips: impatient, brooding, nocturnal. I caught up to him and put my arm around his shoulder. His steps were surer than mine, although it was my neighbourhood. I had drunk too much beer.
            Every time one of us came back we’d do the same thing. With the passing of the years, it was something we held on to as old school mates. We’d meet somewhere near Melbourne Central then head to a nearby bar where we’d drink beers by the jug until someone got hungry. So then we would set off for Chinatown looking for the same cheap restaurant we’d eaten at last time. We never found it, but quickly settled on one that might have been it or looked just as disreputable. There we’d eat three course banquets and wash them down with watery Asian lagers recommended by the waitresses. As the years went on, these nights began to end earlier and earlier; some had work the next day that now mattered to them. Work never mattered much to me, and even less to Carl. He didn’t have a job anyway; he was just back from South America.
            As I shifted my weight from my feet to his shoulders, I told him how the others were turning into suits, how they now had office jokes and not much else to say. How they had changed, or maybe how they hadn’t changed but had stopped pretending to be something they weren’t. Carl agreed with me, and told me that I hadn’t changed, that I was doing different things but I was still the same. Even when things are different they’re the same I told him.
            We were now past the church with signs covered in Korean writing and walking in the lights of the service station. We didn’t have to watch for traffic or lone trams rolling into the terminus as we crossed the road. It was past four in the morning and there are no cars, not even taxis, at that hour on a Monday in Box Hill.
            I told Carl we should walk up through the mall as I wanted to go to the ATM on our way through. The mall joins the old Whitehorse Plaza with Box Hill Central, the bigger shopping centre set above the train station. Both of them are part of a chain of shopping centres that nearly went under last year. They are now joined as one, Whitehorse Plaza has been completely refurbished and is no longer the dark old cavern it used to be. I was too young to remember it first-hand but I got lost once in the supermarket there when I was about three. It was the lady from two houses down who found me and had them put an announcement over the loudspeaker for Dad to come to the service desk. Her name is Margaret, she used to be a nun and she still lives two houses down but I used to call her the Bird Lady, for the huge aviary of quails, finches and budgies along the back fence of her garden. To reach the bank, we passed through a neatly paved area where they had torn down a wooden gazebo overgrown with wisteria. They tore it down because men and women in tracksuit tops, jeans and runners used to drink there well before noon and smoke rollies in front of their children.
            Carl hung back by the glass doors as I pulled cash from the metal slot in the wall. I’d lost the habit of using a wallet along with my actual wallet when travelling through Europe, so I just stuffed the two plastic notes into my pocket along with the bankcard, driver’s license and train ticket. My other pocket was reserved for a single house key and my mobile phone.
            We walked by the TAB, with its tattered receipts and betting forms littering the pavement outside its locked doors, and Carl still wasn’t talking. I wasn’t feeling much better than in the taxi but I was no longer stumbling, the walk and the air putting an end to the spinning. It’s those dodgy restaurants every time it’s the same I told Carl and he said I ought to be used to it after twenty-one years and no wonder I hated the Chinese food in Europe, it just didn’t have that taste of home and that I must be the only white guy still living in Box Hill. I told him I was born here before it changed and he asked me if I could even remember that, if that even meant anything and so I told him if he didn’t like my neighbourhood he could fuck off back to the dead centre where he came from. And that must have hit on something he’d been sitting on for a very long time because he began to talk then and he spoke uninterrupted for what seemed like an hour, probably because I was drunk, but he spoke and I listened.
            He said it’s not a question of like or dislike because you take your home with you whether you like it or not. He told me he’d left the desert behind years ago but that he still found the desert everywhere he went. Even when things are different they’re the same he told me. And then he told me about the ants. He said that in the desert, the sand is red, but red like it is nowhere else in the world. Out there in the day, he told me, it looks like there is nothing alive because there’s no vegetation and the wind leaves the sand rippled like a rusted sheet of corrugated iron. But there are ants out there, he said, not little black ants like the ones down here but ants as big as your thumb, and they live in this heat and build anthills as tall as a child. So all day these ants go about their business, using their six feet to move quickly over the scorching surface in a single file, working together. But at dusk this desert turns into an icy tundra and the ants have to retreat underground, where the heat stays trapped and doesn’t seep back up to the stars. The ants march back, he told me, they march back in single file, and one by one they climb up the mound and then down into the hole, down into the warm earth where they’re safe from the cold. This column of ants heads down, all except the last one, the last ant in the single file. That’s because this ant gathers together a clod of sand and pushes it up the anthill, stopping the opening with it so the cold can’t make its way into the nest. This one ant stays behind and stops up the opening and doesn’t go down into the warmth with the rest of the ants. It finishes its task and then does nothing. It sits there in the growing dark, waiting for the cold of the desert night to kill it.
            All this time we kept walking, past the chemists where the signs were no longer in English and Italian but English and Mandarin, or English and Vietnamese, or Mandarin and Vietnamese, and past the stationery and gift shops and internet cafés, past the two dollar shops and the restaurants. The restaurants weren’t too different from the ones we went to in Chinatown, but at this time of the morning they weren’t lit up and didn’t smell of ginger or ginseng or shallots but like burnt oil and spoilt wantons. In the windows of the Yum Cha dens the metal hooks hung empty; only hours ago sides of pig and chicken feet and whole ducks dangled from them, glazed and crisp with the fat forming congealed stalactites threatening to fall as the night wore on. They would all have been full. Carl sucked on a cigarette.
            We crossed the road, walked down Station Street and into Harrow Street, coming up against the huge, concrete Centrelink building. I started to tell Carl about Baudelaire and the swan but it didn’t come out right because I started to feel like I needed to vomit and next to Centrelink is the cracked white weatherboard house, which now has its window frames painted bright blue and I told Carl that’s where Mum lived for a while after she left and Carl nodded.
            We weren’t a hundred metres from my house now; we were turning into my street. I was tired, my feet ached and my guts churned again. I was tired, but I wasn’t thinking about my house or my neighbours, the Hong Kong family whose grandma still called me Boy after all these years. I was thinking about what Carl had said. I pushed the key into the lock and we echoed through the hallway, collapsing finally into the couches. I knew Carl was tired too, but I also knew he wouldn’t sleep. He’d lie on the couch for a couple of hours perhaps, drink plenty of water. But as day broke, before the house stirred, he’d go, leaving the front door ajar to spare the clash of wood on wood.
 

“Oscillations: A Brush Without Words and Words Without Images”, by Dilip Chitre

Written by mascara on . Posted in Reviews/Essays.

Dilip Chitre is and Indian poet, artist and filmaker. He has published thirty books, five of which have been translated into German. He has won several prizes and awards.

 

 

 

 

 

           I have been drawing, sketching, and painting since my early childhood when I also started playing with words. My father collected books of all sorts and he being a printer and publisher by profession, some of the books he collected were examples of excellence in book production— illustrated books, art books, atlases, almanacs, catalogues, photographic books—and so on. They fascinated and intrigued me. I spent hours browsing through them. They were the beginning of my visual education as well as my verbal education.

            I used to spend a lot of time in my father’s printing press and his master printer, Baldev Bhoi would give me tins of printer’s ink with their little left-over contents. I would also get left over cut pieces of various sizes and kinds of paper. These were the first art material I used. From Baldev I learnt how to mix inks to produce secondary colours and shades from red, blue, yellow, white, and black. Making different kind of greens by blending blue, yellow, red, and black was my favourite learning exercise. We had lots of trees and plants in our surroundings and the varieties of green I saw there made me want to reproduce many of them.

            My father purchased an 8 mm movie camera and a projector, as well as a box camera, and being the eldest of siblings I got a chance to make five-minute silent movies and to make black and white portraits and landscapes, action snapshots and images of monuments. I used a baby pram to take tracking shots and pans and zooms that were not possible to shoot with the fixed focus lens of the camera. I was already innovating techniques to overcome the limitations of the basic equipment in my hands.

            In the 1950s, after my family moved from the idyllic princely state capital Baroda to the congested big city then called Bombay, our financial circumstances changed for the worse. I could no longer afford to use water colours or fine quality pastels or crayons or pencils. I started writing poetry which costs much less to practise than the visual arts. However, I continued to work out charcoal drawings, pencil sketches, and pastel compositions often scouring the city at night in search of subjects: Irani restaurants, suburban railway platforms, beaches, and even cemeteries and crematoria.

            During my late teens, I made friends with like-minded poets who were also visual artists. All of them were much older than me—-in their twenties or early thirties. Arun Kolatkar was one of them. Through Arun I met Bandu Waze, Ambadas, Ramesh Samartha, and Baburao Sadwelkar. I started visiting the Artists’ Aid Centre at Rampart Row, the Jehangir Art Gallery, and the campus of the Sir J.J. School of Arts. I met very senior academic artists such as Shankar Palsikar who liked my work despite my not being a trained artist, as well as the then upcoming professional artists such as Mohan Samant and Vasudev Gaitonde.

           A little later, I met Bal Chabda and started observing artists at work in his Gallery ‘49 on Bhulabhai Desai Road. My friend Dnyaneshwar Nadkarni, now a senior art critic, introduced me to Ebrahim Alkazi and his theatre group. I made friends with Nooruddin or ‘Nicky’ Padamsee and his younger brother Akbar Padamsee, the painter.

            Bombay of the 1950s whetted my appetite not only to see art but also to practice it myself. I worked on paltry salaries as a tutor in two colleges and as a sub-editor in a daily newspaper. Acceptable quality art material still remained beyond my means. It was only when I went to Ethiopia in 1960 as a high school teacher of English in secondary schools that I got a chance to handle oil colours. In one of my homes there, I painted a mural on the wall of the living room, much in the spirit of prehistoric cave artists.

            Back in Bombay in 1963, I returned to the cramped space of the big city once again. Wanting to live independently of my joint family, I lived with my wife and my small son in leased rooms in different parts of the city, eleven months being the standard period of lease. Living space competed and collided with working space, but now I had corporate jobs that I was forced to take up to pay exorbitant rents and support my small family with a growing son.

            Undaunted, in 1969 I purchased twelve large canvases—-the largest was 180cmx180cm—-oil colours, linseed oil, turpentine, and a set of brushes to start painting the way I had always wanted to. My first one-man show was held in the now defunct Gallery Rampart on Rampart Row. I shared the gallery space with Bhai Patki, who was my colleague in an advertising agency where he was Art Director and I was Chief Copywriter. This show opened on September 17, 1969—-my thirty-first birthday.

            Two of my twelve canvases were purchased by Air India International on the first day of the show: Green Divided by Itself and Erotic Textures. Some of my titles irritated The Times of India art critic, Dnyaneshwar Nadkarni enough for him to comment on the title A Painting for God’s Bedroom as frivolous, though The Sapphire Symphony the diagonally placed 180cmx180cm work dominated by subtle cubes of cobalt, ultramarine, and cerulean blue with a large, off-centre, vermilion dot was generously called by him a masterpiece. I still recall Akbar Padamsee telling me that the dot, instead of being vermilion, should have been cadmium orange to make the painting perfect. The greatest compliment I got, however, was from Professor Shankar Palsikar—-revered as a Guru by his art students. He came with his students, saw the entire exhibition, and said to me half-addressing everybody within earshot, “ I wanted my students to see how a genuine artist dares!”

            I was vastly encouraged by the overwhelming response to my first public show, but I did not dare to take the plunge into the uncertain life of a full-time painter yet. My job in advertising gave me a chance to script, edit, and direct ad films just then; and I needed practice in that medium before I could realize my dream of making independent documentary and feature films on themes of my choice.

            Later, I switched from advertising to the position of Creative Executive in the Art Department of the Indian Express Group of Newspapers. I contributed articles and edits to the paper, too (e.g. Editor S. Mulgaonkar asked me to write an obituary tribute to Pablo Picasso that appeared as the second edit on the editorial page on the day following the news of Picasso’s demise).

           In September 1975, I joined the International Writing Program of the University of Iowa along with about twenty writers from as many countries. When I went into the artist’s materials shop in downtown Iowa City, I was surprised to find two of my poet colleagues—-Peter Clarke from Cape Town, South Africa and Ahmed Muhammad Imamovic from Bosnia-Herzegovina buying paints and canvases. It struck me that the three of us could hold a show of our paintings in Iowa City and in a flash I thought we should create a new interactive art form in the spirit of jazz-—the quintessential American genre of music. Peter and Ahmed agreed enthusiastically.

            I coined the term Triple Triptych for the new form of painting. Each one of us was to do one initial painting and the other two were to improvise on the same theme in their own style. The size of the three paintings was to be uniform. As the space allotted to us by the University of Iowa’s museum of modern art was limited, we could only exhibit three triple triptychs ( nine paintings in all) plus some of our individual works.

            The show was successful beyond our expectations. The President of John Deere Incorporation, a giant multinational company that manufactures tractors and other farming equipment, purchased a triptych entitled Non-migratory Birds for the company’s headquarters at Moline, Illinois that has a formidable collection of paintings and sculptures. Each of us sold some works. The Des Moines Register Weekly carried a cover story on the new art form—Triple Triptych that was credited to us.

            I returned to India at the beginning of 1978 but resigned from The Indian Express, where I had a lien on my job during the Emergency, to work independently as a writer, artist, and filmmaker. I was consultant to a small advertising agency owned by a friend and wrote scripts for short films for another.  

            In 1980, I travelled with two other writers—-the late Nirmal Verma and U.R.Ananthamurthy—-to the then Soviet Union, Hungary, West Germany, and France to explore possibilities of reciprocal literary exchange through translation. The visit gave me a chance to visit legendary art museums such as the Hermitage, the Louvre, the Berlin museum, the Alte and the Neue Pinakothek as well as the Lembachhaus in Munich, the Impressionist museum in Paris— and so on.

            Seeing art on such a scale actually disoriented me in the end. When I tried to fall asleep, I saw such an involuntary cascading slide show of random images of paintings that I was unable to stop. My brain was fatigued by the art I saw. I was like a starving man from a famine-stricken land invited to a gourmet feast that turned him into a glutton who ended up with indigestion. From then on, I learnt to savour art by avoiding to see too much of it in a short time, something that I had already been doing with literature and cinema.

            In the 1980s I decided to focus my energies on making a full length feature film to realize a crying creative need. I knew by then that cinema was the most expensive medium of self-expression and that even to make a small budget feature film, I would need to raise a few lakh of rupees. I decided to take my chance by entering a screenplay in the annual scriptwriting competition of the National Film Development Corporation. I paid five thousand rupees to my friend, Bhau Padhye and purchased the first option on adapting his short story Godam before I set out to work on the screenplay.

            I spent a whole year working on my script and in the process spent all my meagre savings. In 1982, my script won the NFDC’s national scriptwriting award which carried a cash prize of Rs 10,000 and, more importantly, a guarantee of 100% finance if I wanted to make the film myself.

            Friends such as Satyadev Dubey and Govind Nihalani agreed to work without fees and I found an exceptional Art Director in Uday Joshi, a practising architect. My son Ashay was an apprentice cinematographer learning under Nihalani and my wife Viju looked after costumes and properties. My daughter-in-law Rohini worked as my script and continuity assistant. Several young and eager people wanted to assist me as apprentices and, always a teacher, I took as many of them on board as I could.

           NFDC bureaucrats were reluctant to let me make the film and created a lot of hurdles. I had planned to shoot the film in early 1983 before the summer began because the location I had chosen was intolerably hot and dry from mid-April to June. I borrowed Rs 100,000 at an exorbitant rate of interest from the market and started the film. I presented a fait accompli to NFDC and eventually they released part of the budget and continued to release funds till the film was completed.

            I finished shooting Godam in two schedules amounting to a total of thirty-four days and finished dubbing and post-production in ten days. It took us a month to edit the film. Alain Jalladeux of Les Festival des Trois Continents chose Godam as the official Indian entry in the Nantes Festival—as it is known. However, the NFDC bungled again by not sending the film to France in time for the festival and it was shown the next year, 1984, when it won the Prix Special du Jury for Direction. I was 46 when this happened.

            My award for Godam was announced by the festival jury on December 4, 1984 and on that very day the media started bringing in initial reports of the horrible industrial disaster in Bhopal, where I lived with my family then. My son Ashay lived with us in my bungalow opposite Bharat Bhavan and his wife Rohini was six months pregnant. The two—or rather three—of them were in the city where thousands were believed to be dead, or maimed and crippled for life. Bhopal was cut off from the world. There was no way I could communicate with Ashay who was not only my only son but also my Chief Assistant on the Godam project. Viju, my wife, was as helpless as me. She was waiting in Mumbai for me to return from France.

            Our small family world was shattered. Eventually, Ashay and Rohini flew to Mumbai and were immediately examined by several medical experts. As for treatment, none of them had a clue. A homeopath who had clinics in both Mumbai and Pune and had long queues of patients at either place, gave Ashay an out of turn priority in his Pune clinic. That is how we moved to Pune.

            My tenure at Bharat Bhavan, Bhopal as Director of its poetry centre was brief but extremely stimulating. In that multi-arts complex—the brain child of Ashok Vajpeyi, the Secretary of the Bharat Bhavan trust—-I had for colleagues the painter and thinker J. Swaminathan and the theatre director and producer B. V. Karanth. Bharat Bhavan became the hub of creative activity in the fine arts. The cream of Indian musicians, dancers, singers, actors, painters, potters, sculptors, ceramicists, and poets visited and presented their work at Bharat Bhavan. If the terrible Bhopal disaster had not affected, uprooted, and traumatized my own family, I would have continued longer there.

            However, my son’s lung capacity was reduced overnight to a mere 40% due to exposure to the lethal gas— methyl isocyanate. No physicians knew how to handle the effects of MIC or reverse them. We moved to Pune where a homeopathic physician offered us the only hope of treatment for Ashay, Rohini, and their unborn child. In 1985, I resigned from Bharat Bhavan and decided to settle in Pune. Already suffering from chronic hypertension and unstable angina, I had to undergo an emergency angioplasty in 1989. That was the next turning point in my creative career.

            The only way I bounce back in adverse times and difficult circumstances is by painting or writing in reaffirmation of my faith in life and its indomitable creativity. Crises spur me on, sooner or later. I write poetry and create art mostly in self-defence or in search of self-realization. The whole outside world impinges on my creative conscience with its political conflicts and cultural stagnation. I seek my way out by going into myself and re-emerging with what seems to me a way of saying I am. 

            From 1985 till this day, I found in Pune a whole range of visual images that came out on paper, wood, and canvas. I am a senior member of Friends of Visual Arts in Pune, an informal group of artists working in different media, in different styles, and using different techniques. We hold group shows in Pune and over the years we have established our presence. On my sixtieth birthday in 1998, Friends of Visual Arts held a special exhibition in my honour. Two years later, Bhaskar Hande curated my one-man show at the Solo Art Gallery at Churchgate in Mumbai. It was called Paintings of Bhakti. 

            My present show is the first presentation of my work by a reputed professional gallery. On view here are my works of the last twenty-three years. Friends who wish to remain backstage are behind this exhibition of works selected out of over a thousand drawings, sketches, and paintings that use a variety of media and surfaces: oil and/acrylic on canvas, canvas board, and paper; watercolour on paper; crayons and pastels on paper; marble dust, crushed stone, and epoxy resin on canvas; oil on wood; mixed media on canvas and paper; charcoal, pen, and pencil on paper—-and so on.

              I am self-taught, self-driven, and seek self-realization through art.  

              However, I am not a self-proclaimed artist.

 

Kim Cheng Boey reviews “Man Wolf Man” by L.K.Holt

Written by mascara on . Posted in Reviews/Essays.

Man Wolf Man

by L. K. Holt 

John Leonard Press, Elwood, 2007
ISBN: 9780977578771
78 pp. pb. AUD23.95

 

Reviewed by KIM CHENG BOEY

 

 

 

           Lyric poetry has the power to slow time down to intense, expanded moments of seeing and feeling. Its measured breaths connect language and silence, music and poetry, the visible and invisible in an attempt to assuage the longing for answers to the deepest questions of what it means to be human. L.K. Holt’s Man Wolf Man is a wonderful proof of the potency of the lyric. It is an astonishing and deeply satisfying debut, its lyric grace and power, strongly evident from the first to last poem, sustaining the enquiry into the nature of human bestiality, art, beauty and love.

 

There is a remarkable range and reach of theme, style and form here, but the underpinning question is Shakespeare’s “How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea?” Beauty and terror, eros and thanatos reside together in these poems of baroque equilibrium and decorum. Obliquely the poems seek grace and redemption in the face of the unspeakable. The opening poem broaches the dualistic nature of man, the barbarism of truth in the title and the imagery:

 

We want not beauty

but light for aim, or the cover of black.

Sometimes the enemy knocks before

entering. A baby is hidden in the drawer.

 

            There is none of the portentous gravitas that many poets fall prey to when dealing with such grave themes. It tells the truth but tells it slant, as Emily Dickenson counsels.

 

Death and its violent disruptions are taken up in different ways in the rest of the collection, in “Slaughter House,” “The Botanist,” “Violence,” and most movingly in “Long Sonnets of Leocadia,” a sequence about Goya, the master of the abominable and grotesque. The speaker of these dramatic monologues is Goya’s housekeeper-mistress, who is rumoured to have borne him a daughter and who was erased from Goya’s will by his son. Here, in a reinvented sonnet form and in stanzas effortlessly rhymed, love and loyalty are held in tenuous balance with horror and death. Goya’s art of unflinching witness is vividly rendered: “every horror a new eyehole/ for you to focus.” Holt captures Goya’s signature subject and style in precise, fluent strokes: “You paint a purposeful silence, mouths chasmal/ to consume all sound, small complete eclipses.” The wolf motif in the opening poem looms large in the last poem of the sequence, and refers to Goya’s crayon sketch “Wolf and Man”; in its central location in the collection and in its foregrounding of the key motif, “El Otro,” which means “the other,” as the wolf is called in Spanish folklore, becomes the pivotal lyric in the collection. It depicts Goya’s art of witness, the vigilant wolf-like way he observes and turns human carnage into art. Goya himself metamorphoses into the animal that is his emblem for the human condition:

 

Yet when our time comes

we want nothing but to stay wanting; to be consoled

 

looks a lot like the end. I’m scared of dirt.

You, of the wolf who does not flee but, slowly, turns.

 

The sequence, like the other two sequences “Unfinished Confession” and “Glove Story, Paraphrased,” reveals a capacity for sustained engagement with the subject, and a delicate, thrilling fusion of intuition and intellect. There is an erudition that is never showy, a deep engagement with historical facts that feeds her quest for understanding and equilibrium in the face of terror. Indeed, Holt wears her learning lightly, gracefully: Galen, Donne, Shakespeare, Kristeva, Primo Levi, Althusser all cohabit harmoniously in a language and form that is intricate and sinuous. The elegy to Althusser captures his life and work in a powerful psychological snapshot, the lyric cleverly miming the postmodernist reflex of “interpellation”:

 

He has no history: a thorn of theory

for the biographer. He ‘epistemologically breaks’

from himself each moment of each day

and in a such break – a tiny slice of clock –

He Killed His Wife. Capitals his punishment.

 

The discontinuities of death faced are not merely public or historical. There are intimate familial portraits of profoundly moving elegiac note. “Grandmoth” commemorates the poet’s grandmother through a marvellous metamorphosis of image and theme. In its lyric grace and delicate handling of detail, it is an impeccable elegy worth quoting in full:

 

On the wall the moth has fashioned itself

two-dimensionally, self as self-portrait.

 

Its eye-forgeries see everything in the room:

where I see memories it sees a great feast.

 

They are always fleeing, like thieves, like bits of dusk

left behind, at the opening of drawer or door, their stomachs

 

freshly full of coat or jewel-box lining; tweed and velvet

are left a demented lace of their hungry design.

 

From the box where I keep her necklace

(in non-existent photos I see her neck laced

 

with it, I see how it hangs consolingly beside

her one lonely breast) out stole a moth

 

and I thought it was her: my grandmother

returning as something hungry for a time not lived.

 

           The moth, a symbol of transitoriness, triggers the memory of the grandmother, and a fleeting moment of recognition and rebirth. The details are never loud, gently evoking the movement of thought and feeling, aided by the couplets that render the sonnet all but recognisable, another instance of Holt’s formalist leaning, which is not content with using inherited templates but turns them into startlingly fresh and coherent forms. “Half Sestina” is another example of Holt’s confidently deft handling of form; here the sestina is remodelled to convey the narrative threads between parents and child: “In sepia wraps, father is a baby I can hold anytime. / To forget my beginning and console him in love’s-end: / an oxymoron brutal; impossible by design.”

 

Holt handles serious themes with delicate grace and irony. There are also playful erotic moments of Metaphysical or Cavalier verve and wit. Donne is present not just in the parody “The Flea,” but also in “Pompeii” and in “Sedimentary Layers,” which, like Donne’s love poems, yokes the serious and playful together in a carnal moment:

 

If a geologist were to wander in

and see us lying here

 

– my head on your chest but

but your legs on top of mine –

 

he’d certainly be a little perplexed

over whether you or I came first.

 

           This is one of the delightful lyrics of the here and now, an instant unburdened by history and death. “Bird Ghazal” offers a train of fleeting avian transcriptions, revealing a mind as alert to innocent pleasures as it is to the sombre shades of history:

 

The tern – wings ink-tipped – is poised mid-thought before

a thermal, formal arc: wind’s calligraphy in the sleight of bird.

 

These are necessary moments of light relief. The collection returns to a more sombre note in the last poem, “Time of Houses,” a lyric sequence exploring the existential ideas of habitation and home, man’s tenancy on this earth. The sequence sifts the different meanings of “house” in relation to different stages of life and ends memorably with “Apocalypse House,” recapitulating the key motifs and images and resolving tentatively the conundrum raised by the opening poem. It is a solution that we all expect, but the way Holt broaches it is arresting, unaffected, and makes us pay attention to a common truth – that we must love one another or die:

 

You leave in the time of houses always assuming

you need not say more than a ration of farewell,

 

nor shake out the pit where your head emptied out

into pillow, not smooth out the sheet’s seismogram

 

of ripples, nor pack your things into boxes, your hair

from the plug, not pre-prepare in lines in my tongue

 

every is into was, nor unfocus your face caught

and framed into that of the stranger you were but

 

once, nor snuff out the synapses I light for our love,

little bonfires of love, man’s first type of home.

 

          In its Auden-like affirmation of human love, the poem answers the questions explored in the earlier poems and also imparts what Yeats calls “a unity of being” to the entire collection. The book has a wonderfully coherent feel to it: the man/ wolf theme explored in different variations, the subtly orchestrated leitmotifs of art and death, and the way inexpressible truths are intuited or glimpsed rather than overtly stated. Yeats says that man can embody the truth but he cannot know it. In their persuasive music and electrifying imagery, Holt’s poems embody the deepest truths of the human condition.

 

Holt possesses a rare Mozartian grace and range: witty and light, erotic and playful, sombre, meditative and elegiac. Her mastery of form is exquisite and exemplary; she has devoured and assimilated Donne and Shakespeare, and is able to turn inherited forms into something uniquely her own. Holt has set very high standards in her debut collection, not just for herself, but for Australian poetry.

 

(Parts of this review, written entirely by the author, are reprinted with permission from the Judges Comments 2009  NSW Premier’s Literary Awards)

Cyril Wong reviews “Young Rain” by Kevin Hart

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Young Rain                                                          


New Poems by Kevin Hart

Giramondo, 2008 (85 pages)

ISBN: 9781920882457

 

 

Reviewed by CYRIL WONG

 

 
 
            Kevin Hart’s poems are full of darkness and light, oscillating gracefully between meditations on death, the limits of selfhood, sex and the erotics of longing and memory. And although they are composed in a style that seems disarmingly straightforward, the poems sometimes suffer from a barefaced corniness.
 
            When the poet is attempting to draw our attention to a name within a name, within which his dead mother sleeps (“My Name”), or the life “barely lived” that brushes against him on its way to somewhere far away (“That Life”), it is with a elegiac sense of loss, as well as a desire to define the ineffable in life and language. At times, reminiscent of Robert Frost, the speaker celebrates the reduction of his life to the barest of essentials: “My hands – I rest my head on them. / My eyes – I rest my mind on them. / There’s nothing that I really need” (“Nights”).
 
            Other times, such as during the “Amo Te Solo” sequence, the language becomes trite (“There is no life on earth / I would not spend with you”), quasi-poetic without being funny (“When a tornado starts its crazy swirl / Just let the house blow down”), even banal (“And my right hand works o so quietly there”) and the poet seems to mistake crudeness for authentic candour (“Fuck off, fat clock – I want her now”). It is also amusing to note how John Koethe, on the back of the book, is eager to claim that such “lustiness…has almost disappeared from contemporary poetry.” Koethe has obviously not been to many slam-poetry readings in- and outside of his country.
 
            It is during the shorter lyrics that follow that the book seems to really take off. In “The Great Truths,” for example, the poet juxtaposes a self-conscious sense of banality
 (“The world is love / No matter what we make of it”) with the cleverness of lines like “The pen must know a hand on it” and “pens fly quickly to our hands,” while in “Lightning Words,” a mental struggle plays out in taut moments like this: “Prayer, / That terrible, strange thing – // A soul / Unclenching something fierce to play…With evening falling fast…And hoping to be gripped / Halfway down.” A grappling with the onset of darkness, and with what this darkness can mean for the spiritually anxious speaker, forms the troubled heart of this quiet and sustained meditation.
 
            In the fourth section, a long sequence, “Night Music,” takes centre stage, where a greater poetic artfulness and an infinitely more affecting display of honesty are showcased: “The day my mother died I was home late: / My lover told me bluntly at the door…I heard her slice / Onions and carrots while I simply say / And waited for the thought to cover me / So I could live inside it for a while.” Then in the fifth and final section, a stirring and evocative long poem, “Dark Retreat,” takes on the dark again (whose meaning is personified dramatically): “Dark One, you know me to the bone, / You scrape my heart / And find too much that frightens me. / The dead are yours, I know; but still I turn.” But the speaker is ambivalent about this terrifying union with the dark; there is the chance that it might reunite him with loved ones, after all: “My father – he is dark / My wife – o she is dark / They are not far: take me.” 
 
            Here is a poetry that bravely attempts to speak to a universal experience of desire and love, but also loss and mourning. It is full of equivocation and a brazen sentimentality that occasionally undermines the force of its message. Yet, as a book, Young Rain has enough of a convincing sensuality and a persistent sense of metaphysical wonder to make up for its deficiencies.
 
 

 

Dinah Roma-Sianturi

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Dinah Roma-Sianturi is an associate professor of literature and the director of the De La Salle University’s Bienvenido N. Santos Creative Writing Center (Manila). Her first collection of poetry A Feast Of Origins (2004) was given the National Book Award by the Manila Critics’ Circle while her recent work Geographies of Light (2007) won a Carlos Palanca Memorial Award for Literature.
 

 

 

Family Portrait 

 
Where I touch their faces
creases cut through their gaze,
dreading the escape
past the lens.
 
Too many times I looked,
too many times I fancied
where they had gone after
the stillness, how into the fields
blurred by their shadows, they had
shaken the horror off their bones.
 
Among them, I could have
taken my place, stepped into
the imperceptible pact of light
and shadow, past and present
conniving where I’d stand
in that instance of bodies
composed for history—
 
Next to my mother, perhaps, barely
sixteen, faint in the background,
her lean arms limp at her side;
or, beside my aunt, a nimble girl,
whose hair shorn of passion,
sang herself to exile.
 
What story of that year
and place recalls the daybreak
they were herded into the river mouth,
the hour calmed by the leaves’
consenting sway?
 
In this airy, well-lit room,
a tale long sealed in glass
shimmers each time light shines
on them now, as when sun hits
water, as when surface breaks
in ripples of fear.
 
 
 

After Hafez


I did as you say.
I did not surrender
my loneliness
too soon.

I waited for what
it can teach me
of heaven
and earth,
of what keeps
them apart.

What blessing it is
when voice breaks
crying out for God— 

a heart seasoned,
the body scarred
by cuts deeper
than divine.

 
 

The Naked Imperative


Endure is what the morning
Wants to say each time dawn
Bares the gentle sprawl
Of her body as light seeps
Through the thin shade
Failing to honor why she is here—
The shifts of joy, the unbelief
In promise that moves her
Past space, her steps,
The pardon of distance.

And what is it like
When she stands bearing
The gift she mourns and seeks,
The desire that comes
With the world, and offers
No door out of it? 

                     Endure is this
Woman’s will and giving.
The earth stirred, hewn
By its own longing.

She is still. Naked. Sleep
Of deep valleys, ridges and planes—
The nightfall’s landscape
Of blissful absolution.

 

Enoch Ng Kwang Cheng; translations by Yeo Wei Wei

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Enoch Ng Kwang Cheng is a poet, literary translator and publisher. Since 1997, Ng has been at the helm of firstfruits publications. In 2005 he won the Golden Point Award for Chinese Poetry. In 1991 his first book of poems were awarded Best First Book by the Taiwanese literary journal “The Modernist”.  His poetry has been featured in journals in Singapore, India, Malaysia and Taiwan, and anthologized in China and Singapore. Ng is one of the awardees of the Singapore National Arts Council Arts Creation Fund 2009.

 

 

Yeo Wei Wei is a teacher, literary translator, and writer. Her interest in translation began during her PhD in English at the University of Cambridge. Her translations have recently been published or are forthcoming in journals in India, Taiwan, and the U. S.  She is currently working on a translation volume of Enoch Ng Kwang Cheng’s poems (to be published in 2010). She lives in Singapore.

 

 
 
 
 

书虫                     
 
毛毛虫
吞吐一部份诗行
成可口香叶
 
一部份张贴在蛹
的内壁
 
取光
 
 
Bookworm                
 
The caterpillar
Munches a few lines
Tasty leaves for its repast
 
Lining the walls of its cocoon
With the uneaten parts of the poem –
 
Therein and whence
The light.
 
 
 
家事       
                                       
（一）灯火  
 
水退以后
额头火红
 
犬吠声
篱笆好
一片月
住下， 就是一生：
 
彩电
蕃薯
枪声
女人
齐齐蹲下
 
凝视远方的老鼠
时间似猫眼
 

（二）马戏

 
独眼牛
在杜撰的钢索上
平衡祖先
了无新意的
困境
 
猪在肥
水灾在雷
 
 
(三) 晚餐
 
武装
                   革命结束之夜
                   摸着石子
                   过河回来的元帅们
                                            
晚餐生蚝
                    佐以京戏：
                    黑猫 白猫
                    穷追老鼠
 
 
 
 
From Family Matters
 
1. lamp light
 
After the flood recedes
foreheads red as fire
 
dogs barking
sturdy fences
a sliver of moon
To stay is to settle down, a lifetime:
 
colour tv
potatoes
gunfire
womenfolk
neatly crouching
 
time spies on mice in the distance
with watchful cat eyes
 
 
 
2. circus act
 
One-eyed bull
on the steel wire of fancy
calibrates the ancestors’
unoriginal
circumstance
 
pigs fatten
floods follow suit
 
 
 
3. dinner
 
In fatigues
the night the revolution ended
stepping on stones
the generalissimos cross the river, returning
 
raw oysters for dinner
peking opera for company
black cat white cat
hunt in vain for mice
 
 
 
 
十二月                
 
 
如常的警笛声
 
果核纹路分明的下午
 
天蓝如此
 
下课以后球就会滚到另一边
 
雨后无辜的蘑菇
 
则不免让人分心
 
地表, 板块, 土拨鼠: 松动的日子
 
说不定难免就是
 
湿翠的菊花无端开落
 
 
 
december                              
 
the police siren makes familiar rounds
through the seed grooves of an afternoon.
thus the blue sky surveys:
a ball rolls from one end of the court to the other, after class.
mushrooms, newborn after the rain,
daintily lead the eye and mind astray.
these days of unwinding, a palpable reprieve tingling soil and sundry:
earth’s surface, tectonic plates, groundhog.
moments, perhaps, for spectatoring and speculation:
chrysanthemum flowers, bursts of moistened jade, bloom and fade, just so.
 
 
 
 

父亲素描                                  
 
 
晚年
他的脸开满菊花
 
南中国海过的眼睛
不再潮汐
耳，继续路往天籁
鼻穴， 深埋梁祝
嘴， 沉默得很大声
 
唯双眉翔不出
翔不出
铁蒺藜，以及
铁蒺藜那边的泥土
 
 
 
Portrait of My Father                 
 
In the twilight years
His face bloomed into chrysanthemums.
 
The eyes that crossed the South China Sea
Were weaned off the tides.
The ears followed still the trail of nature’s sounds.
The nose, buried deep in the legend of the butterfly lovers,
The mouth spoke loudly without words.
 
Time and again his brows made the mad flight
Flailing again and again
before the barbed wire fence,
exiled by the barbed wire fence,
from the land over there.
 
 
 
想起杜甫                                           
 
– 纪念与梅剑青同游悉尼的日子
 
风停了废墟开始浮出水面
急急急带雨: 床在异地, 前世是码头
天空系在脑后, 我们是风里来火里去的云
高人江湖满地, 踢踏过唐人街, 已是中年
猿声多一阵少一阵, 人倚斜了天涯
啸过冬天漫长的边境
哀伤的头颅内住着完整的瓷

                                        

 
Remembering Du Fu                                  
 
– in memory of the time spent with Boey Kim Cheng in Sydney
 
After the wind died down, ruins rose from the water.
The rain poured, making haste, making haste:
our beds are remote from home; our past lives, a quay.
 
Sprawling behind the mind is the sky –
while we who have no care, we clouds blazing through wind and fire,
what care have we for the masters? Already there are too many in the world –
enough that Chinatown was our playground until middle age caught us playing truant.
 
Marking the rise and ebb of monkey cries, man leans to rest and the horizon slants.
Ranting and raving along the borderlines of winter;
The pained skull shelters a piece of porcelain, perfection no less.
 
 
 
Note:
In July 2006 I was in Sydney for the launch of Boey Kim Cheng’s book After The Fire: New and Selected Poems. It was a holiday as well as a work trip for me. We spent quite a lot of time traveling by car and we listened to his CDs of Du Fu’s poems.
 
 

 

Rizio Yohannan Raj

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Dr. Rizio Yohannan Raj is a bilingual writer who has published poetry, fiction, translations, criticism and children’s literature in English and Malayalam. 

Her debut novel in Malayalam, Avinashom (2000) was shortlisted for the DC Books Silver Jubilee Award and is presently being translated into English. Her second novel Yatrikom was published to critical acclaim in 2004. She was part of the revival of the Mumbai Poetry Circle while she lived in the city. Her poems in English have appeared in journals and anthologies in India and abroad. Her debut collection, Naked by the Sabarmati and Other Guna Poems is under publication at the Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi.  

Rizio has also translated into English, some of the landmark poetical works in Malayalam such as Kumaran Asan’s Veenapoovu and Chintavishtayaya Sita, and many of the 20th Century Malayalam writers from various generations. She has done translations from other languages, the latest of which include two novels by the Swedish writer Torgny Lindgren, The Way of the Serpent and Sweetness into Malayalam, and the co-translation of the first single collection of Maithili poetry in English, Udaya Narayana Singh’s Second Personal Singular. She has also translated and introduced Gujarati and Marathi Dalit poetry into Malayalam.

Apart from her literary writings, Rizio has been balancing two simultaneous careers in publishing and higher education. During her decade-long career as a books editor, she had headed the editorial departments of Navneet (Mumbai) and Katha (New Delhi). A PhD in Comparative Literature, she has also been a faculty member in the Mass Media department of Sophia College, Mumbai. She lives between her home in Mumbai and Kasaragod, Kerala, where she serves as Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature at the Central University of Kerala.

 

Tree

While the show is on
beneath its sprawling shade,
age creeps in
without the tree knowing it.
 
Suddenly
the whole spectacle
is another ring of memory,
the trunk, older by a year.

 
 

Naked by the Sabarmati
 
1
 
Dream:
 
You beckon me from the purple trail of the day,
I rise from the warm shore:
our clasped hands, a thorny globe in mid-air.
 
The salt in the air nearly blinds us;
yet we look into each other’s eyes
and find the first stars of the evening.
 
‘We must cross the night together:
it is time we sought the river.’
 
2
 
Journey:
 
The silhouette of the hills
is a reverie etched along the horizon.
We are as prayerful as the trees,
hymns frozen on their way to God.
 

We walk under the moon in growing silence,
waiting for a song to come by.
Someone whimpers–
a feverish piccolo or a sunflower withering?
 
It’s one of those strange nights
one smells the dew on autumn leaves.
I close my eyes and chant –
Wind! Wind! Wind!
 
 
3
 
The road leads us to the wall of the city by the river.
We press our palms against it;
our touch, a sigh dividing a swell of silence.
The wall eagerly splits before us: we enter the city:
hushed slums and stained minarets, our witnesses.
 
But where are the men and women
who had painted dreams of hukkah on my autumn nights –
the handsome kite-flyer, the fat woman of wit,
the bearded old philosopher, the paanwali behenji,
the turbaned tractor driver, the Madrasi mechanic?
 
Where are the farmers
who had squatted upon after-harvest stories –
Chandrakant, Lalitabai, Bhoomir Dhrumesh, Fatema, Aalam?
Where are the sleeping children?
Where are the bhajans? Where is the banyan?
 
 
4
 
A tremor runs
down to my toes.
 
‘Your hands are flushed, ’
your quivering voice breaks deeper into the air.
 
Dear, I am red from within; I have swallowed embers:
words, gestures, silence.
 
You know it; your face shows your knowledge—
the stars in your eyes are tired while you whisper.
 
I cannot bear uncertainty any more, and run to the river.
But there are only dead stars and our pallid reflections in it.
 
Comrade, can you name this moment
to which even the river has lost its flux?
 
 

5
 
Perhaps, the river must wait
before it can flow again,
for everything waits:
 
field for seed,
serpent for woman,
fig for hunger,
rock for diamond,
bansuri for breath,
quill for ink,
parchment for Time
 
Waiting fills the elements, too:
 
a white piece of sky
a coppery speck of land
a cobalt drop of sea
a black pole of wind
an orange sun,
 
wait for Word.
 
 
6
 
And then you and I run
as though a lightning has entered us.
Through the flight our clothes leave us
one by one, till the skies offer
themselves to us, and we grow wings.
 
The peeling was abrupt; nothing
had prepared us for this bareness.
Now we are gliding witnesses
to the trembling of the city –
is it seized by fear or shame?
 
We can’t make out:
Have we been late in arriving?
Have we no choice now
but to flee in our starkness
as though our sins are chasing us?
 

7
 
City of opposites,
along our naked flight across your breast,
you remind us of our one true Spartan.
 
His frail body had warned us
against choking in our clothes,
like truth getting lost in words.
 
We now remember our semi-clad martinet,
and see how this age asks for all we have
to be allowed to return to our nature.
 
From the bare banks of this river
it is clear now: we have endured too many guises;
a shedding is inevitable.
 
We must lose all our garbs:
we must turn digambaras,
with just the ashen horizon on us.
 
Our wild bodies alone may save us now:
they will tell this blind century
that we are woman and man first.
 
Our nakedness will again connect us
with this river,
and with each other.
 

8
 
Hope:
           
There, the river calls us now to its flow,
even as our last clothes renounce us:
 
‘Let us share our remains:
you, the sweat on your brows, and I, my longing.’

Now you and I stand in knowledge of each other
as in a garden of memories.
 
With infinite tenderness I tell you,
‘Comrade, let us celebrate our freedom.’
 
We embrace by the Sabarmati,
bare, forgetful.
 
And we enter the flowing river:
 
light floods us –
 
Light.
 

Phyllis Perlstone

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Phyllis Perlstone, a Sydney poet, first worked as an artist and experimental filmmaker. She turned to poetry full time in 1992, taking courses in poetry at the New School for Social Research in New York. She has gained various awards, including the NSW Women Writers poetry prize in 2004, and was second in the National Women Writers poetry prize in 2005. She has published reviews and articles. Her poetry is published in various journals and anthologies including Westerly, Siglo, Social Alternatives, Notes and Furphies, Meanjin, Blue Dog and A Way of Happening. Her first book is You Chase After Your Likeness (2002), reviewed in Southerly by Jennifer Maiden, and by Louise Wakelin in Five Bells. Her poem “Music and Landscape and other Consolations” was included in The Newcastle Poetry Prize Anthology for 2007and her latest book The Edge of Everything published by Puncher and Wattman was shortlisted for the Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry in the 2008 Premier’s Awards for N.S.W, and ‘Ondine’ was included in Motherlode, 2009.

                                                                                                                                                                  (Photograph by Max Deutscher)

 

 

Hokusai
 
after your ‘thirty six
views of Mt. Fuji’
now you surprise me
on my calendar for April
with a print of poppies
the flowers are paper party-cups
folded on themselves
or flattened wide by a wind
springing the seams of things
in whole fields
open to the new season

That’s why I look at

my mother and her sister

in a snapshot

on a city street in Sydney

at their eyes on the photographer

their smiles and their hats 

the bunched violets on my mother’s lapel 

and my aunt’s cape

flaring on her shoulders

they dare their happiness

as if they were young and without care –

looking good

they might have said of themselves –

 

and why I stare at my orchids

my white ‘butterfly’ phaleonopsis

my dendrobium purples that arch out

into the room

and then turn to look outside

at the lemon-scented gum

rising,  a casuarina going up even higher

and then back again to gaze

at a grevillea – the way

it crowds the balcony with a branched extension –

its tiny flowers spray-brushing the rail

 

Hokusai, because of your print of poppies

I look around at these things

for a joy to match yours

 

 

 

Tuesday 24th April 2007

 

For the rain it raineth everyday

today’s rain is falling

landing on leaves on roofs on

whatever catches it first –

it’s as steady as the air

it drops through –

at one or two almost-stopping points

you can hear the run of it

over the ground

where it puddles and leaks into holes

At an attention of waiting for its last

or next to last tick

my ears can’t help but measure it

Expectancy – as it’s still   

unable to be tightened into silence –

doesn’t let me escape either

from your stress  

your turning away

from what  I can only think to myself

you don’t need to feel…

Basho’s frog croaks  

in the half-quiet

the  sound of my voice can’t repeat

adequate replies to you –

the rain a mirror to everything

comes back

as if it’s shining a night-light at itself –

there’s a lane of echoes

opening and closing

only the frog’s joking note

can hop away

 

Lachlan Brown

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Lachlan Brown has studied poetry at the University of Sydney. His poems have appeared in Heat, Southerly, Total Cardboard and Philament. He was shortlisted for the Blake Poetry Prize in 2008 and is a recipient of the Marten Travelling Bequest for poetry. Lachlan lives in Southwest Sydney and teaches at William Carey Christian School in Prestons.

 

 

a secret work

After a time the prophets kept their silence,
no longer speaking of that place where decisions were made,
where the glint and curve of hardened metal formed a singular language
and the cries of departing flew out across the landscape.
I have struggled for years, against this gap in the record,
attempting various solutions with little hope of success.
Now though, I sense the approach of another,
and must make preparations to leave this city.
The shadows of buildings darken the pavement,
dragging the evening ahead of itself.
And the wind channels its way through every street,
like the breath of something vast that draws near.
I am locking my office for the final time and so take out a small key.
Without astonishment I feel its weight settle against my palm.

 

a miracle occurs

Somehow I have made an astounding return:
the alps rise against a blue sky, the sun streaks down the valley,
a meadow feels those mountains pulling skywards
and lets its daffodils run into the light.
Yes I have seen this place, known it before.
In my childhood I was taken to many fabric shops,
and as my mother made her purchases
I would weave my small frame through the rolls of material
into a soft world that did not begin or end.
In one store a picture of this setting was fastened to a wall,
and I stood spellbound, until my name was finally called.
Now, so much later, I am here and cannot help but smile
at that younger self pushing through a forest of silk and cotton,
only to be held, silently, captivated by a scene.

 

Brenda Saunders

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Brenda is a Sydney writer and artist, of Aboriginal and British descent. She has had work published in journals anthologies and on the web. Her poetry readings have been broadcast on ABC RN and 2MBS. In 2008 she won the NSW Society of Women Writers Poetry prize. Brenda plans to publish her first collection The Sound of Red in 2010

 

 

Under the net

He is a man without a shadow
living in the park. Humid nights hiding
behind the kiosk. Or in the undergrowth
his dark shape spread on ivy. He wakes
to the murmur of couples leaving
a well-lit path: footsteps on the grass.
Settles to the steady roll of traffic.
Christmas lights. Possums sparked
to an all-night frenzy in the giant trees.
                       
The shaft drops him into old territory
an open vault. Stale air. He waits
as the cold closes in, counts his steps
along the rail, unsteady on flint.
Hands trace a line to a corner place
at the end of a  walled-in tunnel.
He lies awake, listens to the sound
of his breathing against the whirr
of trains. Heading into blackness. 

 

Blind Faith

He comes at me. Side on. The weight of metal
pressed at my side. A hand clamps my mouth.
He breathes one word, up close. Move…move 
There are men on the ground, a gate swinging
I am deaf to any thought of protest as the bag

covers my head. It smells of fermenting hay
hot against the lids. I listen to the men shouting
in strange accents, count each turn out of town
senses on high alert. We drive for hours. Stop
when the air is cooler. Maybe it is already night.

Blind Man’s Bluff at a half-remembered party
Arms search empty spaces for familiar shapes
a friendly voice. Now I wait for some command
to shuffle forward: like an old woman shackled
by pain. A baby stepping onto new ground.

Sounds carry when you’re closed in, bare feet
on mud-brick. A square, three paces each way.
I have learnt to be attentive to every variation
strain to catch familiar phrases under the door.
When a guard raises his voice I hold my breath

tighten the little fears, mouth dry. A water bottle 
anchors my hands, roped against risk of slippage.
Clothes cling heavy under waves of midday heat
its prickly light penetrates my roughcast prison.
Only night loosens the pressure under the mask.

Or the touch of water. One small escape allowed
for daily bathing, to absorb the playful splashes
on skin and hair: fill a chasm inside me. Waiting
for the barter, like prized sheep penned at night.
Back and forth a mobile’s ring tone sets the price

of freedom. A pause in the skirmish: long days
trading this body for comrades held like me in
some other place. Waiting for payment. Funds
exchanged for my ordinary life, already pledged
long ago to their distant cause. Sight unseen. 
 

Rumjhum Biswas

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Rumjhum Biswas’s prose and poetry have been published in India and abroad, both in print and online. Notably in South, Words-Myth, Everyday Fiction, Muse India, Eclectica, Nth Position, The King’s English,  Arabesques Review, A Little Poetry, Poems Niederngasse, The Little Magazine – India and Etchings – Australia. Her poem “Cleavage” was in the long list of the Bridport Poetry Competition 2006. She won third prize in a poetry contest run by Unisun Publishers India in February 2008. A flash fiction by her was shortlisted in the 2008 Kala Ghoda Arts Festival literature section Flash Fiction Contest managed by Caferati. Her poem “March” was commended in the Writelinks’ Spring Fever Competition, 2008. She won third prize in the Muse India Poetry Contest 2008. Her story “Ahalya’s Valhalla” is among the notable stories of 2007 in Story South’s Million Writers’ Award. She was a participating poet in the 2008 Prakriti Foundation Poetry Festival in Chennai. Links to her work at www.rumjhumbiswas.com. She blogs at http://rumjhumkbiswas.wordpress.com/

 

 

Pelicans On The Brisbane River

“They’ll be here soon,” said the man in the wide brimmed hat
lumbering on his way down
into the wide belly of the tourist launch.
So we stayed above, sipping iced lemon tea
picking at our lamingtons nonchalantly flicking
crumbs off our clothes. Honestly speaking
nobody cares except for mother. “Don’t be so
impatient,” she said, as she smoothened her hair
before it succumbed to the river breeze again.
“Didn’t the man say they’ll be here soon?” So we waited
above the snowy froth churned up in our wake.
The launch skimmed like a water skater on the river’s skin,
flying faster than the flock of birds that seemed
to be doing a marathon just for the heck of it.
Some people preferred Brisbane’s sun bitten breeze
so they went up. But some, like mother, wanted the soft river
spray. We however outnumbered them all
clambering all the way up and then
all the way down. The river crept smoothly along
humming a song. Until finally the stars of the show
arrived waggling like miniature paddle boats,
jelly- jawed and ready to receive
our excited offerings of fish and more fish peeled
from buckets of ice. The pelicans smiled.
They spread their wings out wide for us and our cameras. They knew
what to do and they knew what to eat. Unlike that other
family that day, so lost in contemplation at the lunch buffet,
holding up a softly murmuring meandering queue
as they pondered and weighed
the pros and cons of each and every dish.

 

The Other Side of the Sun

Dusk has hefted this bloodless day
upon grim shoulders
and is now striding towards a horizon
where the Borealis are waiting
to feed…

Night drops down on iron haunches
and scans the sky
for a Moon, any Moon. Even an Arabian Moon.
Instead this night is hit full in the face
with wind, sleet and hail

Snarling at this January day, winter’s dragon
teeth stand
row by row by row on power lines and telephone poles,
ready to champ down hard
on bird, beast and man…

Its power is elusive. Elusive like the mirages
in the burning fields
on the other side of the sun. Redemption is too far away
and winter’s flinty fingers are breaking now
over the dreams of the dead lying forgotten
in unimportant lands.

 

Anaesthetized

I am at this portal
where the corridor of infinite doors
opens up one after the other
multiply and recede further
and further away from me.

Light turns opaque. Light turns heavy.
In that deep and perhaps dark world
light turns. Time ceases its terrors.
Dreams release their hold over notions.
My mind becomes torpid like a tomb.
My thoughts are embalmed. Sound
becomes numb and sight is nullified. Touch moves
more than a thousand touches away
from skin catacombed by sutures.

In the darkest maws of my belly
another consciousness stirs.
I cede control. I cede myself.
There is no ‘I’. No ‘Me’ left to hold.

Afterwards the hours are counted and stored
in the bag of oblivion.
Time becomes wafer thin.
Afterwards my tongue begins to seek words.
My words desire utterance and a man who loves me
understands me. Translates my wishes to those
who wield syringes.
There is no ambiguity here.

Eventually I unhinge and flow back
through the canopy of infinite doors
from that long corridor.
I return as one who was
a special guest of death before the gap
between then and now was squeezed
into an infinitesimal thing. I return as the one
after whom the world spun
and fell back like rain.

But I do not care then. I do not care.
Like a new born baby, I do not care.

 

 

Libby Hart

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Libby Hart’s first collection of poetry, Fresh News from the Arctic (Interactive Press, 2006) received the Anne Elder Award and was shortlisted for the Mary Gilmore Prize. She received an Australia Council for the Arts international skills and arts development studio residency at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre at Annaghmakerrig in Ireland. During this residency (2008) she wrote the book-length poem ‘This Floating World,’ which will be performed by Teresa Bell and Gavin Blatchford (2010). Publication of ‘This Floating World’ is forthcoming.

 

 

The very thought of you

You’re the face I’m seeking
each time I think of love
and my yearning covers
all the miles I’ve travelled tonight.

I’m alone, but I’m cuddling up to the thought of you,
of your fingers that come to me as if ghosts
inside a memory so crystalline.

I’m rounding my passion,
curving it to your meaning,
as you leave a kiss against lip
as a hand strokes my hair
as a breath is tattoo-delivered against brow
with a sigh so full of thought.

That’s when you leave me again.
That’s when I remember
I’ve been meaning to tell you
that you hold my soul in your hands.

There is silence at the gate,
all my angels press against the fence.

 

River poem

To capture the moment just before it happened:

The river was epic,
everything coiled and flowed
inside a great restlessness.

Then came a ribbon of blood,
then came curlicues made by stone,
then came the water, inking.

Canoeists passed silently like ancient travellers.

 

A step-by-step approach 

You walked a straight line.
He circled around you.
 
You stood and stared into the sun.
He handed you a blindfold.
 
You got used to the feel of it.
He then led you down the garden path.
 
You walked with the smallest of steps.
He talked along the way.
 
You listened to those whispers.
He smiled when he made you laugh.
 
You walked in bare feet.
He guided you with fingertips.
 
You stopped, hesitatingly at the edge of sand.
He said: Trust me.
 
You felt a soldier crab climb your toes.
He seemed too preoccupied to notice.
 
You listened to the sound of the sea.
He kept his eye on the horizon.
 
You felt the roaring wind.
He steered you closer to its strength.
 
You blinked when the fold finally left your face.
He blinked in sympathy.
 
You looked at his quiet eyes.
He turned and then looked away.
 
You said something about how his hair moved in the wind.
He couldn’t see the point of it.
 
You said that it left his eyes to linger, to search out the world.
He said the wind was by no means a friend.
 
You said: Trust what you know.

Arthur Leung

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Arthur Leung was born and raised in Hong Kong. He regularly presents reading of his poetry and has had his poems published in anthologies such as Hong Kong U Writing and Fifty-Fifty, as well as in numerous magazines and journals including Smartish Pace, Yale Anglers’ Journal, Loch Raven Review, Existere, Paper Wasp, Bravado, Taj Mahal Review‏, Poetry Kanto, QLRS, Crannog Literary Magazine, Pulsar Poetry Magazine, Words-Myth, Magma Poetry and elsewhere. Leung has served as external editor for Yuan Yang and as guest poetry editor for Cha. He was a finalist for the 2007 Erskine J. Poetry Prize and a winner of the 2008 Edwin Morgan International Poetry Competition.

 

 

Kiss of the Moon

Drunk in its mild yellow, that silence
explodes like the first thunder in June.
My breaths swallowed by the curve of a body,
no name is fuller than the cheeks of the moon.

I taste the peach in your tongue, only feel
the words from your lips but never your eyes.
Heartbeats like summer frogs, knowing a touch
would return you to the soil of paradise.

 

Angler Fish Sashimi
(reinterpretation of a Chinese poem by P.K. Leung)

I come from the border between sea
and river, stage my performance art
in every winter, cordially invite
the audience to take part. I put a pair
of scissors beside me, you may choose
to cut away anything from my body.
 
I look at you, solitary lad,
your reckless cut of my gill. You angry
young man, a sharp cut on my skin.
I gaze at you, crazy old fellow,
you cut my stomach, ovary, and liver
that survives the winter, plump and juicy.
 
I give everything to you as you swallow.
You chew everything, understand
the taste of blood and know more of me.
I’m your magnificent caprice,
not an artist high above, bring
myself to your hands to manipulate
your boundless imagination.
 
I trust you’ll treat me well, without trust
how can we communicate, my art
take shape in the society?
You touch me and feel a heap
of flimsiness, or you can grasp my profile,
tell my truths and lies, a biased
favour for big mouth, strange face?
 
I sacrifice my best portion
to my best audience. You carry a part
of me, I become a part of you
and dissolve in a deeper, wider ocean.

 

Simon West

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Simon West was born in Melbourne where he teaches Italian at Monash University. His first collection, First Names, was published by Puncher and Wattmann in 2006. It was shortlisted for the NSW Premiers’ Prize 2007 and joint winner of the William Baylebridge Memorial Prize. In 2004 he held an Australian Young Poets Fellowship. He is also the author of The Selected Poetry of Guido Cavalcanti published by Troubadour Press, 2009. 

 

 

 

To Wake In Someone Else’s Dream

To wake in someone else’s dream – 
             weather that warmed bare
             arms and the inner arch of feet.
In a capital of lost provinces
to keep crossing avenues of flowering tiglio – 
             unmarked doors were just ajar
             all the birds were facing south.
Lime trees, we reminded ourselves.
Lime tea at all hours.

And a flock of pigeons rose – no, click
            of slats as old women drew their blinds.
And a heckle of car horns was heard – no,
            bells from a distant church 
            recalled. And listen,
a blackbird, now, at dawn not evening.
You said, happy as a blackbird, and talked
           as if at home. Still
           they sing alone. Branches
           were dark under summer leaves.
Not a whit less solid. Coated in lime.

 

Blackwood

We leaf before daylight from blackwood or ironbark
leaf on a pulse pressing as breath:
green vowels from blackwood.
They falter by nightfall. Their colour bleeds away.
We hope at the end of stuttering twigs: hard
won foliage. Even the lightest notes fall to ground.

In the thick of things there was eavesdropping,
there was sunlight sunk on events. Where we trailed
the forest there were pathways
to hold as a sound, and wing
and voice of startled bird.

We clasp single words.
We feel the rough shell of what has fled. An age
may slip from our hands.
We leaf before daybreak.
Our foliage is sparse. We leaf on an impulse
from blackwood or ironbark.

 

The Mirror

Eventually
quickly
          everything changes.

The mirror breaks and we find a way through.
Shards cling to our cheeks like cold water.

Blackbird song streams in a startled mind.
Courses rediscovered in spring.

A new vowel
fills our mouths.

 
*

Even the faintest ways lead.
In late spring
the grass grows fast in the mountains
a foot or two high and folds 
         to mark the passage of a child.

Followers even by night
by torchlight, somewhere
         we have no word for
         climbing slowly.

Silence keels, its slate roof sinks
        on things.
        Scattered voices ask of you.
        All we have a certain liberty.

 

Jennifer Wong

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Jennifer Wong was born in Hong Kong. She has participated in various poetry festivals and readings, including the Man International Literary Festival in Hong Kong. Her poems appeared in several poetry journals in Hong Kong and overseas, including Coffeehouse Poetry, Iota, Cha. Dim Sum, Aesthetica and Oxford Reader. Her debut poetry collection Summer Cicadas was published by Chameleon Press in 2006. She graduated in English from University College, Oxford University, and is currently doing a Master’s degree in creative writing at the University of East Anglia, UK.

 

 

Myth

Do not talk to trees.

They have deep squinting eyes.
Long stout necks sticking out.
Rough chafing leather.
 
In the warm house you feel them
Inhaling and exhaling, your old furniture

Or their harmless smiles
In your child’s picture books.

It’s hard to get lost in the woods
Without meaning to.

Do not talk to trees.
At night they dance in ballet shoes,
Tell secrets to one another,
Put on a ring,
Wisdom for every year.

 

I Remember

Remember
Your dreams spilling
From bright red velvet?

When time feels
Free and right as memory foam.
A child puts his best things
Into his delicious pockets.

Curious and curious-er,
We poke and shove our fingers
Into every small crack or hole.

We dare to tilt
Order of anything;
Pluck cotton balls from dolls,
Turning them into clouds.

Remember how to play?

 

Knack
 
On our special occasion nights out
I enjoy her wonderful knack
For exuding grace
Carrying a toy-like satin pouch
Designed to hold a lipstick.
 
Her zealousness over the years
To build and expand her troop
Of uniform stilettos and pumps,
Arranging and re-arranging
Her proud kingdom,
Commands my highest respect.
 
Every time she drove
I longed for a built-in
TV in our mini cooper.
 
In the wee hours
I spent more time than necessary
Unpeeling onion skin shaping her legs, amused
But unimpressed by sheer vanity.
 
Drunk but not losing her wit, she teased me,
Patterned boxer shorts,
For flavours I kept
In my top left drawer.
 
 

Kerry Leves reviews “la, la, la” by Tatjana Lukic

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la, la, la

by Tatjana Lukic

ISBN 978-0-7340-4051-0

Order from: www.fiveislandspress.com

 

 

Reviewed by KERRY LEVES

 

 

                 Born in Ojisek, Croatia, in 1959, Tatjana Lukic studied philosophy and sociology at the University of Sarajevo, and published four poetry collections in Serbo-Croatian while she was still in her twenties. After long-brewing ethnic conflicts broke out into war in what was then Yugoslavia, Tatjana Lukic came to Australia, as a refugee with a young family, in 1992. Poignantly enough, two Serbo-Croatian-language poems of hers were translated into English for the Yale University Press publication, Cross Currents, a Yearbook of Central European Culture, in the same year. 

                 In Cross Currents, Lukic’s poems were published with work by five other women poets from (then) Yugoslavia and the translator, Dasha Culic Nisula, identifed Lukic’s topic areas as “human relationships” and “the relationship of a poet to her craft”. Nisula did not comment on the technique of Lukic’s poems, that not only present an emotional situation, or broader life situation, through evocative details and/ or compressed but telling images, but also submit the subject matter to a detached, critical working-over. Comparison, Buddhism tells us, is always bitter; but the speaker of Lukic’s ‘Measured Units’ balances the inevitable gall (the poem closes on an image of time as “bitter honey”, dripping like water from a leaky tap) with an even-toned valuing of things-in-their-own-right, as she contrasts a poetic and a domestic vocation.

you were pregnant with a son
I was pondering comparisons

time is one
but the hours are different

your clock – a wall decorated
with a barometer, a spoon
a red box for pepper
cinnamon and salt

as a second hand
you tiptoe quickly after a man

while you quiet  a child with a pacifier
I erase a title
before dawn I question: should I put a period?

you change diapers

you have your own room –
a line full of clothes
your own midnight next to your husband’s breath

                                                from ‘Measured Units’, translated by Dasha Culic Nisula

 

                  Neither the speaker nor the object of her inquiry – sister, friend, neighbour, another self – is overtly a winner or loser; the poem leaves it to the reader to make such judgements, according to need and/or desire.  One of the mysteries of the translation is whether the Serbo-Croatian for the English word “period” – denoting the punctuation device – also connotes menstruation. This ambiguity tends to leave ‘Measured Units’, good as it is, floating in a kind of bi-lingual limbo or fog. No such difficulties attend Tatjana Lukic’s new poems, all written in English.

                  After arriving in Australia, Lukic worked as a researcher and data analyst for various government departments, mostly in Canberra, according to some circumstantial evidence.

east row, mort st, canberra

it started just at the time of morning tea
‘no sugar for me’, one of the fleshy gods said
and emptied his spoon over concrete land

‘it’s snowing!’ at one dash
we all left our desks
and rushed to the windows

‘open, sesame, open!’
just to catch a flake
and we’ll behave well again
staring at the screens till dark
‘open now, it’s snowing!’

but there is no magic fit enough
to move the glass walls of our cell

one by one
we walked quietly back
to our chairs
and dialled
a dear one
‘it’s snowing, darling, open the window!’
recorded all answering machines
across the lake

       

                   la, la, la shows that Lukic’s technique, of which a reader gets tantalising glimpses in the Cross Currents selection, proved transferable into her new tongue. Lukic’s poems join an expressionist impulse – and a warm emotionality – to a disciplined consideration of the place, weight, value of emotion as it “looms” in the world’s “small things” (quotes here are from the book’s epigraph, taken from Euripides’ Ion).  The result is surprisingly satisfying, as the “small things” that the poems attend to are actually made to connect with history. The poem ‘1959’ manages this with enviable simplicity and magnificent found surrealism. The poem launches, almost all-at-once-together, a new-born child; the Cuban Revolution; the first marketing of Barbie; a hit pop song (Rocco Granata’s Marina); the aftermath of the Soviet invasion of Hungary; and the great Australian post-war immigration boom, as if all the above were so many helium balloons with different faces.

war was freezing in the air, everywhere
lost in a purple patch of a magic land,
the grapes were ripening
when i slipped into the world

before i had time to cry
the red dust swept the olive green
off havana’s streets

the winds were playing over the seas
with a bunch of new flags of all colours
above freed lands

at the back of his new weatherboard cottage
down under, in yarralumla, where the world will end,
a young settler, an italian builder, was planting an olive tree

the earth was circling slowly
getting its strength
what for?
even a gipsy searching a baby’s palm
could not guess

                            from ‘1959’

 

                  Lukic goes in less for knock-out-one-liners, than for the whole poem as multi-dimensional construct. The critical distance that the poems practise towards even the most touching or tender life experience, nudges the reader into the sense that a poem, regardless of its tonal intimacies, is an artificial thing, a feat and also a fiction. The speaker of ‘to a reader’, from the final section of la, la, la, is upfront about this:

how simple it is to trick you, you dear sitting duck
a diddler master takes you for a ride just like that,
a snake in the grass, from time immemorial
grinning at your silly bookish trust

                                                  from ‘to a reader’

 

                   Perhaps this verbal flaunting and taunting merely shows that flamboyance does not begin or end with Kylie Minogue’s galactic hairdo and mirror-panel dress. Lukic’s subtler showiness makes room for wit aplenty.

fallacy

he eats roots and leaves
and that’s fine as he eats well
and then quietly walks away
this is not what i complain about
but why like a wombat?

his dull depart is saying
i would and i would not
leave you darling

or: yes i am leaving with no doubt
but see it’s not so easy for me to slide out of
this warm burrow onto loose tracks

or: i am leaving now my love
but you have a very good chance
to catch my leg and turn me back

and if you don’t
it’s not my fault
when our story comes to its tearful end

or: i am not leaving in fact
oh i never do that
i’m just sniffing out a rooty soil
while walking around

what is he trying to tell me
a chubby eater
sneaked into the myth

where i prefer to see the elegant
speedy wings
of a flying beast?

 

                  la, la, la is structured around the changes in Lukic’s life. The first section, ‘there’, is mainly a recollection of a Serbo-Croatian past, personal and historical; the second section, ‘here’, from which ‘east row’ and ‘fallacy’ come, offers broad-brush social description of Australian life; the third and final section, ‘anywhere’, contains the book’s most ambitious writing.

                  Lukic’s expressionism is not trapped in a box of style: it connects with others, remakes itself. ‘anywhere’ includes poems dedicated to Australian poets that Lukic encountered when she started writing again and was once more getting poems published, both here and overseas. Joanne Burns, Margie Cronin and Laurie Duggan are dedicatees of three of the book’s most unconventional offerings. Each is a prose poem: ‘crater’ (for Cronin) begins by associating the great, passionate Chilean Pablo Neruda with “turning fourteen, rosy and tender, each monday falling in love forever”. But Lukic’s speaker provocatively asks herself/ her reader: “how could i possibly love what everyone does”:

nobody ever borrowed this tome? i will, and i will fall in love with these oddballs and dudes, a moment i turned to my side of the bed, my russian lovers were shooting themselves in the head, quiet French men, holding me like a champagne glass and sucking my tongue, gazed at the time past behind my neck…

                                                  from ‘crater’

 

                   The speaker honours her sense that she is “turning fourteen for ever”; then turns the direction of the poem towards the internet, to a “petition for a crater on mercury to be named for neruda”, and to Margie Cronin, in a display of verbal fireworks that mingles postmodern playfulness and a fiercer, perhaps more durable modernist commitment to making it new. Managing a generous homage to Margie Cronin’s own complex and versatile poetics, ‘crater’ equally makes it new and plays. The prose works for Laurie Duggan and Joanne Burns likewise engage with the ways in which these writers actually write.  

                    It may be hard for any reader to decide whether ‘there’ or ‘anywhere’ contains the most poignant writing. The first poem in the book presents the “la, la, la” title phrase as what a young mother, walking her baby in a stroller, sings to entertain/ reassure the child in a war, while bombs drop in backyards and an unknown man is seen for the first time “coming out of wires with a bullet in his chest”.

what did i sing?
about a cloud and a bird,
a wish and a star,
la la la,
yes, nothing else

                                                 from ‘nothing else’

 

                 The book’s final poem, ‘reverse’, takes up the “la la la” phrase in the context of a pleasant but coolly disengaged encounter, lunch in a peaceful land.

when the coffee arrives after the meal
we will sigh and talk about the weather
a lovely day, we need rain
la la la
i will nod and gaze
behind your shoulder

where are you?

i am here,
licking my cream
licking my sugar
nothing else

 

               That last line sounds the note of solipsistic finality: in peacetime or war, there is no escape from the solitary confinement of self. Yet how lightly the point is made, with a flirtatiousness that mocks, even defies the rather scary recognition embodied in “where are you?”

               The book’s final poems are also Lukic’s last: ‘thinking in months’ writes the aftermath of a pessimistic diagnosis.

life was like a tiny colouring book, short and sweet,
returning now to a black and white fight,
the evil cells and the good cells, a simple story
before a long sleep, the only war on terror i am in

                                                from ‘thinking in months’

 

                 Tatjana Lukic, a poet of the inner life, but also of the ironies that attend the mind’s to-ing and fro-ing between a given world and a private view of it, has built, using English words, a testament to her life; it is spacious, generous, and as full of joy as it is of sorrow. Lukic’s distancing techniques – her multiple ways of opening a lyric poem to participation in a big, un-lyrical world – relate her to the great Central European poets of an earlier generation, to the Polish Zbigniew Herbert and the Czech Miroslav Holub; perhaps Bertolt Brecht is a common ancestor. We can regret that Lukic is gone, but rejoice that her book takes its place among some of the best cross-cultural poetry written in Australia, alongside the very different poetics of, for instance, Ali Alizadeh, Kim Cheng Boey, Ouyang Yu, Ania Walwicz and the Vietnamese-Australian Xuan Duong.

Maria Freij reviews “What Came Between” by Patrick Cullen

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What Came Between

by Patrick Cullen

Scribe, 2009

ISBN: 9781921372889

$27.95

http://www.scribepublications.com.au/

 

 

Reviewed by MARIA FREIJ

 

 

Patrick Cullen’s first book, What Came Between, explores the life of three families in Laman Street, Newcastle in the aftermath of the 1989 earthquake, and following another incident with earth-shattering consequences for the community: the closing of the BHP steelworks ten years later. These life-changing incidents provide the framework for Cullen’s twelve interconnected stories, some of which have previously been published in Best Australian Stories, Sleepers Almanac, and Harvest. Cullen’s stories feature individuals at different stages in life and offer us an insight into the existence of very different characters, whose lives are, in one way or another, in a stage of turbulence, tragedy, or change. The earthquake becomes a trigger; cracks appear in the walls where no cracks used to be, or were they always present? The feeling of slippage runs like stormwater through the stories: involuntary childlessness, ageing, love, secrets, and guilt bob under the surface like the whale calf in Newcastle harbour, which, inevitably, is in for disaster when he crosses the surface. For the characters, the secrets and concerns continually approach the surface, but since what lies beneath will bring suffering if brought into the light, much remains necessarily and frustratingly suppressed.

Cullen’s characters are Carveresque in their working-class roots and minimalist depiction. Cullen eloquently balances the line between that which is spoken and that which must remain unsaid, showing great restraint in his narration. Newcastle features as a prominent character in the story as the city itself provides the ground upon which these characters have built their lives. When it is literally shattered, they lose their footing and their unravelling is inevitable:

 

     Sarah got up, dragged a chair over beside the wardrobe, and reached up and ran her hand over the wall.

‘This wasn’t here before,’ she said, tracing her finger along a crack. ‘I’m sure it wasn’t.’

Paul stirred and looked up. ‘It’s always been there.’

‘Well, it’s opened up some more now. I’m sure of it.’ (p 7–8)

 

For Paul and Sarah, the earthquake is the beginning of a falling-apart in many ways. Just the one crack—and yet, a wealth of secrets trickle from the past into the present. Their childlessness, Paul’s previous life, and Sarah’s illness make for an intriguing depiction of the life of an ordinary yet extraordinary couple. Paul’s breakdown, though neatly restrained, means he takes time off work, his focus turned to repairing what the earthquake has shattered. As he retiles the bathroom, he is able to reconstruct the physical order of his and Sarah’s life. Still, the foundations he is trying to recreate will inevitably be affected by the lies he insists on telling his wife.

For Ray and Pam, as the closing of the steelworks leads to the suicide of an old friend, the unravelling of old lies creates a fear of loneliness and abandonment. The emotional turmoil is subtly depicted, yet the dialogue rings true: ‘Please don’t ever leave me,’ Ray says in the night, his face buried in his wife’s hair. When Ray falls ill and his estranged son returns from Sydney, some of the most human of emotions—guilt, fear, and pride—truly come to the fore, and the proud behaviour of both father and son yields to something more important as love, yet again, is proven stronger and more important.

For the young man whose grandmother, in her old age, moves from her house in Laman Street to stay with her daughter in the countryside, Newcastle is a new beginning. Indeed, his luggage is lighter than that of the street’s other inhabitants. When his young girlfriend falls pregnant, they start a new life together in the Laman Street home, and its previous owner, somewhat surprisingly and disappointingly, never features in the story again. This couple, representing the possibility of change and rejuvenation, seem less credible in actions and reactions; but this is perhaps because of the vigour with which these young people go about their existence and this, in turn, due to their youth. Still, because of the ease with which their troubles are resolved, these two characters appear least realistic: their relationship seems at threat, by the ominous owls in the attic if not by their innocence, but their love persists against the odds. It seems that in a time of chaos and uncertainty, love is still a force to be reckoned with.

Cullen’s characters’ lives are beautifully reflected in the movement around them: ‘Fruit bats crashed into the fig trees, and flapped and fought and fell away to do the same thing further along the street.’ (p 55) Cullen creates a fantastic ambience through the depiction of the city and his wonderful detail: the ‘small red figs pinballing about beneath their feet’ (p. 155) mirror the microcosm he has built, its characters at the mercy of the larger forces at hand: by the ocean, with its sprinkling of coal ships on the horizon, his characters grow apart, and come together. Cullen’s use of light and shade, in combination with the vulnerability of the characters towards the elements and nature: the earthquake, the tree roots growing into the pipes, along with these people’s love for each other and their instinct to defend their marriages, relationships, and lives make for a compelling and engaging narrative that resonates far beyond its last page.

 

Samantha Wilson

Written by mascara on . Posted in Poetry.

Sam is Melbourne based, obtaining her now defunct degree -Bachelor of Creative Arts (hons.) – at the University of Melbourne a fast-receding number of years ago.  She runs SNAFU Theatre with her childhood friend and playwright May Jasper, and is only now learning how to dress seasonally.


 

The Shape

 

in the end,

the house empty

of course i realised

that i had dreamt of you.

a forcibly empty house

me drying my dishwashed hands

and suddenly crying,

catching myself,

and i remember dreaming

of your small warm hand

in mine.

how i had dreamt you into

my street,

how we had walked together

in the hot afternoon’s

half-light,

you as silent and content,

as i thought you used to be.

in my kitchen,

patting water on my cheeks,

i saw the largeness of

my grief for you,

breathing, living on

without us,

and all the ways i

would continue to pay.

 

 

 

III

 

It is his endless

morning glare

that hits first,

not buried beneath sheets

but encrusted to a chair

or

pouring milk into a bowl

or

slowly pushing the plunger down.

 

He is not expecting you

and that is his consolation.

 

Scraping him off,

touching the edge of the banister

you could very well not be there,

very well not be grinding yourself

into him.

 

*

 

It is four in the morning

when he gets home,

familiar through the sightless presence,

as leaning against templed hallways

he sees you, just,

a fluttering glimpse in a dimming eye

as his hands fumble

dumbly for switches and

pocket change, and he

doesn’t quite know who he is any more

when sudden light surprises the

reflection crouching in the bathroom.

 

Stained, searching through

mirrored gazes for eyes and

ears and the four small moles

that one day disappeared.

His body deflated into

a husk.

 

The moon has beaten him tonight

standing by the window, and

whether he will finish in your bed

is a question you wont ask,

as lives past are discovered

in the floorboards

the house creaking

with unexpected scrutiny.

He does not know you are watching.

Mornings were made for nights like this

as sobs and breath

not your own

numb themselves into light.

 

*

 

He drinks four glasses of water

and remembers, finally, to close the fridge door.

In this half-light

he is a unicorn, almost,

pressing his body down in

bleak inspection of what is still there.

 

And only one thing he can say:

No body is this here

No body is this.

 

 

Murakami

 

You go into a room, because the bedside lamp

is on. You don’t have to turn it off,

but you want to. You trip over

a bedsheet, but the whole time your

eyes are fixed on the lamp.

This is how M makes you feel.

 

You are so fixed on this idea, that

instead of seeing Brando’s tux shirt in

a Godfather poster, you think he’s

holding a soft drink container.

 

It takes several re-glimpses to

shatter that image.

 

Paul Fearne

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Paul Fearne is a poet and philosopher working and residing in Melbourne, Australia. His poems have appeared in a number of journals including Westerly, Stylus, Unusual Work and verb-ate-him. His philosophical work has appeared in journals such as Consciousness Literature and the Arts. He is currently undertaking a PhD in Philosophy and LaTrobe University, and has completed a Master’s degree from the University of Melbourne.

 

 

 

A Dream of Coral

let the light of our hesitation bend around the moon
                           and clothe the sea in memories
             let the sound of the morning
sweep this cloud of butterflies
             into the uncertainty of tomorrow

there is a pause in the turning of the sky
              it marks the sorrow the birds feel
that the winter has forgotten its home
                            and the snow is reticent to melt

              a sea horse searches for its past
but the future is all it knows
                                        and in time
it will become a dream of coral
                           and wander further
             than it ever has before

 

The Regrets of Dragon Flies

a clothes line whirls in the breeze
                          on it
              sway pegged dreams
and the regrets of dragon flies

              a rustling catches our ears
it is the litter of autumn
              and the wandering of our fears

in a rain that has not fallen for a thousand years
              the simplicity of our forgetting
                             curls in a gentle mist
              and reminds us
that the last wish of a starfish
                             is all the dawn needs
to chase away the morning’s cobwebs
                            and their gentle intransigence

                            a nervous pride of clouds
(a fellowship that has never known a moments rest)
               gather up our best intentions
and scatter them throughout  the sea
and into the hopes of time
                             as she whispers the trembling names
                of all those lost silences
that have kept us searching
searching for the dust of the night’s companionship
                              and the kind wisps of longing
that sleep in the ancient abbey
we once knew as our home

 

Cyril Wong reviews “Between Stations” by Boey Kim Cheng

Written by mascara on . Posted in Reviews/Essays.

Between Stations

by Kim Cheng Boey


Essays, Paperback, 320pp
ISBN 978 192088 2501
Giramondo (September 2009)
Aus $24.95

www.giramondopublishing.com/index.html

 

Reviewed by CYRIL WONG

 

             Kim Cheng Boey is a writer and poet who migrated to Sydney with his family from Singapore in 1997. One could call him a migrant writer. Between Stations, according to one book-description that I read online, is “his first collection of travel writing.” But such a description says very little about a book that is all about the personal and existential crisis of a writer trying to reconcile disparate cultural worlds, as well as one trying to come to terms with his past. 


              Beginning in India, then passing through the evocative worlds of Egypt and Morocco, Boey’s accounts of sojourns in far-flung places in the world are full of gritty anecdotes about fellow-travellers and impassioned references to famous works of art, music and literature used to magnify and universalise the writer’s constant wanderlust. As a Singaporean, I feel a connection to this ex-Singaporean’s desire to disappear into foreign spaces that resist the vicissitudes of change which are still essential to our tiny country’s survival today—as a Singaporean tells Boey at one point, “Changes are necessary. Singapore is too small. We have to move forward.”  

              It is easy to see why this desire prevails. The places that Boey escapes into are imbued with an imagined sense of timelessness; they are full of history, art and spirituality. What can Singapore boast of except that it has managed to succeed as a viable and prosperous nation state in just a few decades? Using photographs of long-gone locations and recounting memories about spending time in now-demolished buildings such as the Stamford Road Library, the author reveals how he is rendered distraught by change. Yet he is also quick to remember that a longing for things to be still and for the past to remain the past can be a pointless, self-indulgent exercise. In a chapter about Change Alley, a centre for corporate culture in Singapore, the writer feels “chastened” when he notes how retirees have adapted “so easily to the new Singapore.” He wonders if “the problem is me…I have never been able to be at home in the present; the only place I can feel at peace in is the past.”

            A fear of the past disappearing is tied to memories of a father’s abandonment of his responsibilities. A chapter can set off from an exotic location, rich with historical significance and framed within celebrated philosophical perspectives—think Walter Benjamin on memory or Susan Sontag on the photographic image—or aligned with quotations from influential works of literature by the likes of Cavafy or Du Fu. Then the writing segues repeatedly into a memory from the poet’s childhood, full of authentic smells and sounds, in which a grandmother is cooking for the family, or in which a father is taking a walk, or a smoke, with his son. The essays turn increasingly philosophical and poetic during such shifts. They are particularly heartbreaking during moments when Boey sees himself in his own son; in such instances, the poet also sees himself as his own departed father through his child’s eyes. Past, present and future collapse, which was what the author had hoped for all along—to unify what is lost with new memories forming in the midst of the present.

              Boey’s fans in Singapore would be glad to learn of the psychological and emotional back-story behind his poems, a few of which are quoted in the chapters. I was personally gripped by the author’s experiences as a counsellor in a local prison, as well as the time when he followed in the footsteps of Mother Theresa’s nuns in helping the poor. The poet-as-restless-traveller has become more three-dimensional to a reader like me who has followed his work since my junior college days. A sense of urgency grips the eponymous last chapter (“Between Stations”) when the writer tell us that as both emigrant and immigrant, he has become “adept at switching between codes:” “You become Kim Cheng Boey instead of Boey Kim Cheng…Kim Boey is accommodating…while Boey Kim Cheng has begun to try to find a way back to the old world…He is still searching for a language to utter himself into being.” Such urgency emphasises the schizophrenic state that the writer has been struggling to resolve throughout this book, particularly when this collection of essays is aching to a close.

            The book ends on a plane in which the writer’s daughter is poking him awake while his son announces “Singapore” over and over. On this aircraft that is hovering symbolically and literally between stations, “between home and home,” the author longs to “dwell in an autonomous state, a resting place between memory and imagination.” In this same instant, we as readers, regardless of whether we are Australian, Singaporean, or something in between, cannot help but long for such a place too.

              

 

Carolyn van Langenberg: “Idea For A Story”

Written by mascara on . Posted in Fiction.

Carolyn van Langenburg is the author of three books of literary fiction: The Teetotaller’s Wake, Fish Lips and Blue Moon, published by Indra press. Her collection of poems was published by Picaro in 2007. She has travelled widely in Asia and resides in the Blue Mountains with her husband.

 

 

Idea for a Story

               Leaves dance in the air.

               Dust whirls across the park.

               A dog yelps at its tail. Boys run around anything and everything.

               A woman’s hands disappear, her forearms disappear. A box draws her in, and then she pulls her arms out of the box and raises her hands high in the air. They dart like pale birds, flit and swoop into the box.  

                They dart like pale birds…

                Paper plates smeared with chocolate icing and the grainy green slicks of tabouli spill out of park garbage bins. Flip flop with chewed chicken wings and an empty pvc bottle that takes off with the wind to have a go at the dog. The dog jumps at the bottle and grovels it as if it were a bone. The bottle, too big for its mouth, jerks and rolls and whizzes.

               A woman’s legs walk under a box. Do the legs belong to the woman with the disappearing hands? The dog runs at the heels of the legs. The box bobs and jerks above a body. When the dog races back to the rolling bottle, the box with legs stops.

               The head of the woman with the disappearing hands appears as the whole of the woman’s body bends to pick something up off the grass. She holds the retrieved thing high, pinched between thumb and forefinger, fingers furled into the palm of her hand…

                No camera can see between the soft pads of her fingers furled over the top of her palm, which they touch. She stands still, holding up something small to examine, the box balanced against her hip. She may be reading a sign. She may be one of those women who look for signs to decipher, one who pinches salt to toss over her shoulder for good luck. Caught in this part of her life, she repeats her daily routine, juggling many banal tasks to keep food on the table and clothes on her child’s back. She may look for signs of future good fortune because money is tight. She worries, or does she, about her son’s performance at school, how much television he watches and how few books interest him. Is he a slow reader? How can the camera tell us anything about the life these two live?  As it is, if a camera were to pan this action, it will record that a woman dressed for a picnic in a park carries a box. Her shirt, worn under a sweatshirt, is bright red and her jeans are faded around the knees. She looks dishevelled. What significance will the camera capture in its frame?  What message will be decoded by the decipherers of the visual medium of this woman who loses her hands in a box filled with party food? How will they interpret her holding high something pinched between her thumb and forefinger? Is the message portending that, as she is a mother providing a happy birthday party for her son, she will be rewarded in the future with charming gummy grandchildren? Do those who spend their lives deciphering images drive the life out of motherhood, perching it on top of sentimental interpretation that diminishes humanity?

               She is a woman providing a birthday party for her son. That’s all, in a snapshot.

               The wind tears a feather from the tips of her fingers…

               The wind pelts the bottle with stirred up city grit. The wind smacks twigs and empty crisp bags at the bottle. The wind whips the bottle with wrappers and ripped newsprint…

               Boys yell and run, dog runs and barks, bottle rolls and whistles…

               The woman hoists the box, her head disappears and she stumbles. The box wobbles where her head ought to be, flips open and flap-flaps…

               Add a black sky and the drum roll of thunder with a few big drops of rain working up to a downpour and the scene is set.

               In parenthesis­

               The woman stands at a picnic table in the park. The dog noses a pvc bottle rolling near her feet. Boys cluster at one end of the table, joking about bullshit and who is full of it. The woman’s hands disappear into a box then reappear. They are transformed into birds that rise in the air, swoop and land on the table before taking off again. Her hands plunge into the box again — her hands become other things like bowls and food containers, escaping her attention. Her inattentive eyes mirror the sky that they skim. Grey, they are, with a tree blackening in front of darkening grey…

              Cake rises above box.

              Candles under her chin burst into little flames. Boys cheer. They yell a song about a happy birthday to you. A red-faced boy blows out the little flames. The other boys congratulate him for being full of bullshit. Hands become knife, knife cuts cake, boys stuff triangles of cake in their mouths.

               The dog’s mouth is never shut.

               And so the story begins:

               A woman packs bowls and paper plates and empty plastic food containers into a box. She pushes chewed chicken wings and plates streaked with tabouli and chocolate icing into the park garbage bin. The wind hurls the paper plates out of the garbage bin, tosses them to the ground, whips them across the grass where an empty pvc bottle rolls. The wind and the bottle tease the dog that jumps at the bottle and grovels it as if it were a bone. The wind whips at boys, pushing them backwards when they run forwards. The sky is blackening, the clouds rapidly broiling and thickening. Big raindrops fall and the yelping boys take off towards cars parked under big trees. The woman gathers up the box of birthday party things. When the dog barks and the boys shout, her head vanishes.

               The park is suddenly dark.

               Thunder drumrolls.

               The woman stumbles through pouring rain to one of the parked cars. Her head pops up when the box drops and lands between her breasts and the side of one of the cars.

               When the drenched woman sinks behind the steering wheel of her car, she looks into the rear vision mirror.  The birthday boy, two of his friends and the dog sit in a row on the backseat, grins wet, panting hard.

               Question stops story: Where does dog begin and boy end?

               The next thing that happens is natural. Lightning strikes the ground not far from the car and the thunder that follows is deafening. The dog howls. The birthday boy pulls the dog onto his lap and presses his hands over the dog’s ears. All the boys, lanky limbs crisscrossing lanky limbs, talk one over the top of each other about how doggy ears hurt when noises are loud like thunder.

               The woman behind the steering wheel pushes at wet strands of hair and sort of smiles. She looks enigmatic, like the Mona Lisa. That’s what the camera records. Being a mother is a state of being, like being Mona Lisa.  The image of her as a mother who looks like the Mona Lisa conceals her occupation. She is a writer.

               She galvanises the energy to start the car, a story beginning to unravel in her head. It’s about a birthday party that ends when lightning strikes.

 

[Acknowledgement: Luis Buñuel, An Unspeakable Betrayal: Selected Writings of Luis Buñuel, University of California Press, Berkeley, 2000.]

An earlier version of this story first appeared in Staples, issue 7

Alan Gould

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Alan Gould is an Australian poet, novelist and essayist.  His seventh novel, The Lakewoman,  was launched at The 2009 Melbourne Writers’ Festival, and his twelfth volume of poetry, Folk Tunes, has just been published by Salt.  Among his many awards, he has won the NSW Premier’s Prize For Poetry (1981),  The National Book Council Banjo Prize for Fiction (1992), The Philip Hodgins Memorial Medal For Literature, and The Grace Leven Award for his The Past Completes Me – Selected Poems 1973-2003.

 

 

 

 

 

Two At A Café Table

 

for MG

 

Gold estuary falling on your shoulder,

what does blonde hair do?

It’s thirty seven Aprils since

I swam in gold with you,

 

lay close and breathed pine resin in;

we bonked our lunchtimes through,

our syllabus was tongue and groove

and what might nipples do.

 

Now coffee and our fancy cakes

are lush, but snag our way.

Miraculous how natural

the things we need to say,

 

to find response aglitter in

the lives that we now reach,

this winter day’s exquisite calm,

this frisson in our speech.

 

Is it your body’s loveliness,

is it my voice alone,

is it the gesture of a hand

or curve of your facial bone,

 

that lift us to our form of words

healing as they renew?

How come it took us half a life

to find this rendezvous

 

and see the gift of person in

the flesh that we once held,

now ADG can be less gauche,

Michelle be more Michelle’d?

 

Thirty seven years are here

and shoppers stop to stare

where two old lovers incandesce

and golden is the air.

 

Nathan Curnow

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Nathan Curnow’s latest collection, The Ghost Poetry Project (Puncher & Wattmann), is based upon his stays at ten haunted sites around the country.  He has featured widely on ABC and with further assistance from the Australia Council is writing a new play based upon convict stories and escape myths.   

www.ncurnow.blogspot.com

 

 

Sails and Anvils

 

Travelling to Australia’s most ‘haunted’ house

 

Upon arrival I will be the working poet cocked

for inspiration, directing my hosts with a pen’s arrow

from the signs of my splitting headache.  Inside

the plane the cabin of my head is rocked by

turbulence.  Great sails and anvils are bright

arctic pages, the story of a doomed expedition. 

This is the lesson—do not stay with poets

the night before flying out, drinking ensues

and they just want to have sex or complain

about their rejections.  I left them moaning,

friends of mine, making love like friends,

bearing all but their vocabularies, competing

in wild noises.  Aren’t we all falling, our egos

packed with a plastic whistle to draw attention?

If the plane lands safely there is a rental car

waiting, some compartment I can crash in. 

Another brittle booth, certain to betray me

when the impact finally comes.  I am cranky

this morning, hurtling toward the chapter of

my decline.  But with a pen and a pose I go

to work as if spirited by questions of ‘soul’.

I just want to get off.  Go, get fucked. 

We are turning into cloud.

 

 

 

 

Love Note On Serviette

 

Inspired by an account of the ‘prisoner’ who in 1899 threw a love poem

weighted by a stone over the wall of the Fremantle Lunatic Asylum.

 

my own fond love
this portion find your path
I feel myself beyond myself
am able to choose this rock
to traffic these words
put your cold on me
gazing forever upward
throw me something
I love you I love you
lavender is making sense

 

notice the rocks
I have practiced this
promise me yourself
I found a secret passage
beneath the Peppercorn trees
it is forbidden by the Pope
instead he blessed me
with a hole in the wall
I have imagined
that you wave
 
much like you throw
throw me something
be my gracious garden
your voice climbs over
a lavender ladder
do you want to
hear me breathing
I am feeling myself
the stiff sin of a sinner
the Pope is always watching

 

 

 

The Frame Around Us  

 

Following my night in a ‘haunted’ hearse

 

again my weight on the edge of your bed,

words fall like empty shells, your ticking clock is

Pinocchio’s face, hands point to always speak the truth

 

my up-late brainteaser, I beg you to tell me

but your body is a ruthless mime, signalling all 

that you refuse to say, scared the words will turn to flesh  

 

a shrug of your shoulders, you are locked,

it is late, I am so tired of this coming and going,

one day I will tell you of this grand adventure, what it did

 

and did not achieve, these long road-trips,

a night in a hearse cocooned in my sleeping bag,

I saw shadows spill over the ceiling’s canvas, slide off

 

above my head, slowly at first, each one fell

the way I have become my poems, retreated to

my cluttered desk, I am disappointing to meet in person

 

stranded by language, designed for answers,

neat squares on a page of black, filling the boxes

with crude solutions, revising, we are grubby crosswords

 

down and across, the hands of your clock

trim away the night, as if time decides the rules

of the puzzle, keeps changing the frame around us 

 

just lie down, we are safe for now,

it takes more than courage and words, waiting

to tell you of all I have seen, tonight I will not budge

 

 

(These poems are published in The Ghost Poetry Project, Puncher and Wattmann, 2009)  http://www.puncherandwattmann.com/pwghost.html

Kirk Marshall

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Kirk Marshall is the Brisbane-born(e), Melbourne-based author of “A Solution to Economic Depression in Little Tokyo, 1953”, a 2007 Aurealis Award-nominated full-colour illustrated graphic novelette. He holds a Bachelor of Creative Industries (Creative Writing), with Distinction from the Queensland University of Technology, and a first-class Honours degree in Professional Writing from Deakin University. He has written for more than fifty publications, both in Australia and overseas, including “Going Down Swinging”, “Voiceworks”, “Word Riot” (U.S.A.) and “3:AM Magazine”. As of 2009, he is the editor of “Red Leaves”, Australia’s first (and only) English-language / Japanese bi-lingual literary journal (http://www.myspace.com/redleaveskoyo). His debut short-story collection, “Carnivalesque, And: Other Stories”, will be published by Black Rider Press in 2010.

 

 

Suite of Haiku

Electricity:
a strobing head, a cut lip
My blood gloves his fist.
 
They hug me once as
pillows of breath are wrestled
from my lungs: farewell.
 
Cities capture light
and reflect them back on streets
slick with midnight rain.
 
Through the winter he
watches from his register:
I greet him for smokes.
 
Moon suspended as
she smiles into her scarf and
replaces her phone.
 
Wolves whine at my door –
On the beach, they chase waves and
devour turtle eggs.
 
I write, knowing a
succession of dead poets
expect something grand.
 
He is heartbroken.
She is not. She is waiting.
He is years behind.
 
She lies amidst reeds:
her nude back is bruised where the
ladybirds collect.
 
Fog hugs the king’s legs
as he forges through bracken:
a fox turns to watch.

 

 

Omar Musa

Written by mascara on . Posted in Poetry.

Omar Musa “Hemingway” (Dir: Tom Spiers) from MRTVIDZ on Vimeo.

 

Omar Musa is the 2008 Australian Poetry Slam champion. A rapper and hip-hop artist, he counts amongst his experiences having swum with piranhas and alligators in Bolivia and teaching Aboriginal children in outback Australia. The Malaysian-Australian baritone has backpacked almost every continent and has a treasure-trove of stories to tell. Raised in the orange brick flats of Queanbeyan, Australia as part of an artistic family, the 25-year old says he wants to “introduce a new level of poetry to Australian hip-hop.”

Musa was a winner of the prestigious British Council’s Realise Your Dream award in 2007 and relocated to London to work in the UK hip-hop scene with grime star Akala and slam poet Jahnell. He has been played on Triple J and has recorded with J Records band 2AM Club in Los Angeles. He recorded his debut The Massive EP with veteran producer Geoff Stanfield in Seattle, USA, of whom he says “I finally felt as if I had found the perfect sound to compliment my lyrics.”

“It is a strange animal of an EP,” says Musa. “Written in London, recorded in the States by a Malaysian-Australian, it definitely has an original feel.”  Navigating between underground hip-hop and mainstage performance poetry, Musa’s work is unique.

 

 

 

 

 

Musa’s first poetry collection The Clocks was launched at this year’s Ubud Writers’ Festival.

 

Stephen Edgar

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Stephen Edgar has published seven collections of poetry, the most recent being History of the Day, published by Black Pepper Publishing in May 2009. His book Lost in the Foreground won the Grace Leven Poetry Prize and William Baylebridge Memorial Prize for 2003. He won the inaugural Australian Book Review Poetry Prize in 2005 for his poem “Man on the Moon” and in 2006 was awarded the Philip Hodgins Memorial Medal for excellence in literature. Edgar was born in Sydney in 1951 and grew up and was educated there. In the early seventies he lived in London and, on returning to Australia in 1974, moved to Hobart where he lived until late 2005. He currently lives in Sydney again. He attended the University of Tasmania, studying Classics and English. For many years he worked in libraries but for the past twenty years has made his living mostly from editing, indexing and proofreading.

         (Photograph by Vicki Frerer)

 

 

 

Ardglen

Like gazing at some other family
In a fogged window pane,
Or in a mottled mirror that has lost
Flakes of its silver tain:

The four boys head and tail in the one bed,
Their breath turning the room’s
Frigid midwinter to a dreaming kitchen,
With its fug of steam and fumes.

Does such a place exist? Where might it be?
How get to here from there?
But there they are, there we are, clambering down
The bank, our thin legs bare,

Barefoot (it’s hard to credit) in that cold.
My sook-soft soles revealed,
I’m piggybacked by one of my cousins over
The thorns that mine the field,

Till we reach the dingy creek to fish up yabbies
On strings of sodden meat,
And lug back home our squirming bucketful—
Which of course no one will eat.

Over it goes, then, in the yard; we watch
Them spill and clatter away
Through grass and fence and blackberries, back to
Their soupy deep. One day

We ranged the paddocks—to the quarry (was it?)
Across the railway line,
And tightropewalked the daring empty tracks,
Or, listening for a sign,

We’d place an ear down on the sun-cold metal
And think we heard the humming,
That charged vibration borne from far away
Of what was coming.

 

Sun Pictorial

How formal and polite,
How grave they look, burdened with earnest thoughts,
In all these set-up sepia stills,
Almost as if, embarrassed and contrite
To be caught practising their fatal skills,
They’d stepped aside from slaughter for these other shots.

The American Civil War,
The first war captured by the photograph
In real time. Even the dead
Seem somehow decorous, less to deplore
The sump of blood to which their duty bled
Than to apologize, humbled, in our behalf.

We know how otherwise
It was. They knew it then. The gauche onset
Of murderously clumsy troops,
Dismemberment by cannon, the blown cries
Through powder smoke, mayhem of scattered groups
In close engagement’s pointblank aim and bayonet.

How far from then we’ve come.
The beauties of the Baghdad night still stun
Me: a blue screen where guns and jets
Unloose the lightnings of imperium—
Intense enough to challenge a minaret’s
Aquamarine mosaic in the blinded sun

At noon—and smart bombs fall
Through walls to wipe the city street by street.
Morning, and in the camera’s light
The formal corpses ripen. Who can recall
By day precisely what they watched last night?
Or find the unknown soldier in a field of wheat?

Being surplus, like the killed,
Millions of those old plates were simply dumped.
And in a modern version of ‘swords
To ploughshares’, many were reused to build
Greenhouses, ranged and set in place as wards
Above the rife tomatoes as they blushed and plumped,

While, through the daily sun’s
Pictorial walls and roofs, the long, desired,
Leaf-fattening light fell down, to pore
Upon the portraits of these veterans
Until their ordered histories of the war
Were wiped to just clear glass and what the crops transpired.

(These poems appeared in Lost In The Foreground, Duffy and Snellgrove, 2003)

 

Tomorrowland

You can’t see it from here,
But caught up in its business to begem
Some ripple-silvered bay or the crests of trees,
Or just a golf course with its dewed veneer,
Ante meridiem
The day unfolds its golden auguries
On a charmed sky. A secular congregation
Is out already to revere
The lit east with a helpless expectation.

It’s like a Hopper painting:
A row of figures sitting mute in the sun,
Which by a plantlike, heliotropic action
Their faces and their thoughts are orienting
Towards, almost as one.
And, gazing on that source of benefaction,
They contemplate and inwardly affirm
What lies in store for their acquainting
At the expiration of a certain term.

And even as they stare,
Appraising what the morning rays appoint,
The light that photocopies her crow’s-feet,
The grey encroachments in his thinning hair,
That stiffening hip joint,
Has swept past as though history were complete.
Back in the bedrooms of this white hotel
Their things, wiser than they, declare
No contest in these fancies. Where it fell

An empty shirtsleeve throws
A purely formal gesture of despair
Across a bed, while nothing will arouse
From lank indifference the pantihose
Haunting a sidelong chair,
The disembodied presence of slip and blouse.
Those traveller’s cheques, laid out in a fat wad,
Half signed away, only propose
Their outlays for the briefest period.
      
The day’s lucid ascent
Has charmed its way in here, it’s true, but lacks
Suspension of disbelief that those outside
Contribute, their frank willingness to invent.
On their reclining backs
They count up the instalments, smile squint-eyed
Into a rushing solar past their sight
Will never stay, far too intent
On what’s to come to see it for the light.

 

English as a Foreign Language

One day in bed I read Cavafy
In Greek—her favourite: “Ithaca”—
And in return I won the trophy
Of her admiring Ah!

And I was flattered to astonish
That way. It wasn’t much to do.
She put in a request for Spanish
Bedtime recitals too,

Hoping that she might thereby sharpen
Her skills in the language she loved best.
In the event it didn’t happen,
Like most things she’d suggest.

And Pushkin too, a modest portion,
But that was pushing it too far,
Though I taught her “I love you” in Russian:
That’s ya lyublyú tebyá,

A lover’s commonplace avowal,
But rather difficult to sound
In Russian; it can be a trial
To get your tongue around.

But she repeated those words over
And over till she had them pat.
In English, though—well, she could never
Quite manage to say that.

(These poems appeared in Other Summers, Black Pepper, 2006)

 

The Earrings

I think of you on whom
          Each lobe,
Shifting between the light and gloom,
Displays in some far room
          Its hollow globe.

Small metal worlds are these,
          With real
And independent gravities,
Attracting as they please,
          Or so you feel,

With their grey weight and sheen.
          Once they
Were hers. But she, oh she has been
And will no more be seen
          By night or day.

They were long lost inside
          The void
Of an old jewel box, denied
Adorning: to be eyed,
          To be enjoyed.

They had no hooks or rings,
          And broken
Eyelets: unpolished, useless things
With dormant glimmerings
          To be awoken.

I give them then to you.
          Hers, mine
And yours: all ownings in these two
Now mended spheres accrue,
          Blend and combine;

All of the properties,
          The pain,
Pleasure, desires and memories
That nothing will appease,
          Nothing detain,

Inhere in these brief globes,
          Their slight
Rocking, dependent from your lobes,
A gravity which probes
          Darkness and light.

 

Playing to the Gallery

The last scene, and the two protagonists
Go through their studied pantomime in the park,
Obeying all the script’s instructions, playing
For time as though time hung upon it, playing
To that gallery of sun-bedevilled windows
Warping along a wall across the street:
Site of their judges—none of whom, they know,
Is really there. All the performances
Assume an audience—even of one—
To applaud, to laugh, to weep, or silently
Observe with admiration what they share
By faith alone. The scene inside the church,
The bedroom scene, the labour ward, and the other,
Later scenes, in which that chill locale
Will bring to bear the comprehensive weight
Of its resources. Or the scene beneath
The acid drops of starlight and the moon’s
Bland irony. Wait; listen, when they cease,
For what succeeds their final pause.
Far inland, bulks of stone well-versed in sunset
Perform their purple passages on cue;
The ponderous Pacific solemnly
Repeats its monologue on rock; wind, wind,
Playing for time, recites impartially
Leaves, grasses, patterns on the random water
Across the bay, or the daily rubbish, lofting
Like a kite above the telegraph wires
A solitary delinquent plastic bag,
As though it pleased some connoisseur of light,
As though it changed the history of this day.

 

The Cars

In the open gallery which adjoins
The station, the installed art of the sun
Projects each day’s obsessive stripes and bars
Of light and shadow over the parked cars,
Each pattern as it’s done undone,
Highlighting and obscuring a few coins

Beside this gearshift; on that dash
An almost empty pack of gum; the Ruth
Rendell abandoned on a passenger seat,
Curling beneath the calculus of heat
And time, a comb with one bent tooth
For bookmark; here an ashtray stuffed with ash

And lip-kissed butts of cigarettes;
The mud-caked boots and other walking gear
Jumbled in the back of a four-wheel drive.
Although each morning many cars arrive
Which every evening disappear,
On these few each day’s sun rises and sets.

Elsewhere a list is being compiled
By the grey process of officialdom,
Phonecalls are tallied and the absentees
Accounted for, the tracked-down families,
For whom photographers will come,
Summoned by sobs, bruised eyes, a blank-faced child.

Elsewhere the helicopter sways,
Casting its shadow over what remains,
Like a raptor idling in its famished weight.
Like scavengers small figures investigate
What residue the wreck retains
Of those who have gone home by other ways.

 

Those Hours Which Grew to Be Years

Triptych

(The lynching of Frank Embree, 22 July 1899)

1: Morning

          Take him away,
          Airbrush him out,
And all these men who stand about
In the clean light of day,

          Stern, humourless
          And dignified,
Seem called by duty and with pride
To some urgent address,

          Some clear appeal
          A patriot
And honest citizen could not
Refuse to hear and feel.

          And citizens
          Who hold their pose,
They fix unflinching eyes in rows
On the unflinching lens.

          But there he stands,
          His body stripped
And scored with the judicial script
Of whips, his handcuffed hands

          Held to conceal
          The private place,
His face upheld, composed to face
The lens, and all that’s real.

[ 2: Meridian

It may be nothing but the tree’s
Rubbing against itself below,
But through the leaves
There is a creaking in the breeze,
A bulk that briefly jerks and heaves
To and fro.]

3: Afternoon

And still they do not look at him
          Where he hangs high
Suspended from a maple limb,
          But eye to eye

About his blanket-covered thighs
          And their raw stripes,
Rehearse, recount, particularize
          With lighted pipes.

And nor will he take note of them,
          But broken-necked
Looks up beyond the hanging stem
          As to inspect

Some far-off singularity
          Posed in the sky’s
Flecked blue, if such were there to see,
          And with his eyes.

 

The Grand Hotel

for Les Murray

Apart from that, though, I recall
Something you said about the place:
That you could never see it all,
It seems to propagate with space;

Always another stair to climb,
Always another corridor
With other rooms to count like time,
The end of which is always more;

A sort of Tardis made immense
That somehow manages to flout
The laws of sense and common sense
By being larger in than out,

The three dimensions’ mean constriction
Opened, unfolded and unpacked:
A building out of science fiction.
Or, come to think of it, science fact.

For don’t they say if we could shatter
Their shackled forces we should find
Dimensions at the heart of matter,
Immensities wound up, that mind

Cannot conceive? That’s some hotel,
And just the place to take to heart
And contemplate the parallel
World that this world is made by art,

Whose finite limits charge and prime
The senses they unpack, and store
Dimensions beyond space and time,
The end of which is always more.
 

(These poems appear in History Of The Day, Black Pepper, 2009)

 

Let Me Forget

You run your eyes across the glossy
Lithography of paradise: the sand’s
White gold, the opaline transparent blue
You’ll soon be lolling in, a sky unmarred
And constant to the limits of the view—
All in your hands.
You take the tickets, pass your credit card.

Behind that door, like Cavaradossi,
If you could hear above your heart’s content,
Blindfold and bound,
A stranger fastened to an implement
Appeals for mercy with the world’s worst sound.

Your wife has bought the extra virgin
Inflected with a subtle trace of lime,
The milk-fed veal, as tender as herself,
The chicken livers, the King Island cream—
It seems a pity to omit a shelf—
The chives, the thyme;
And there’s her shopping voucher to redeem.

Behind that door, it is no surgeon
Who makes the live incision, or instils
Into the eyes
Of some mute animal the caustic mils,
Or monitors its functions as it dies.

So home you both go, your attention
Diverted now towards the holiday
In prospect, now the meal tonight, your friends,
Problems with Chloe, and the arbitrage
Absorbing you at work, on which depends
The tax you’ll pay.
You park the Merc before the locked garage.

Behind that door, past comprehension,
Beyond imagining, the universe;
The laws upon
Whose unknown code the selves that you rehearse
From day to day are based; oblivion.

So much you’ve failed to see or mention.
But you’ve no guilt to own to or dispel.
Each day you take
This anaesthetic and it keeps you well
To face the day you could not face awake.

 

 

Brooke Linford

Written by mascara on . Posted in Poetry.

Brooke Linford was co-editor of Egg(Poetry) from 2002-2006. Her work has appeared in several Australian publications. Brooke currently lives in Victoria where she works in Administration and studies Italian.

 

 

 

Fifteen

I loved you at fifteen

 

days of green cordial

nights of coconut ice

you understood me

or fooled me well

 

we stole garden statues

drank warm beer by the river

coloured our hair for $3.50

 

you’re covered in scars now

I’ve heard

and I know

you could never love me

the way you did at fifteen

 

 

 

Motel

 

I’m barely here

restrained

and untouching

 

tucking holidays

into the gaps

with irrational insistence

 

can I love you more

than that

more

than any frantic grab

at poise

at calm

 

I can love you more

than that

 

screened windows

and borrowed sheets

tucked into your arm

with a $3 dinner

 

I don’t care what’s on

any movie

in any room

with any view

 

 

Taste

there are books spread out
a circle of love and heartache – slowly
a drop of red pools
on my top lip

I notice in the mirror how tired
my eyes are
tugging the curls from my hair

I translate
halting
using my fingers
using my tongue to taste the difference

mio marito abita con me
mio marito abita con me

 

 

 

Cameron Lowe reviews “Autographs” by Alex Skovron

Written by mascara on . Posted in Reviews/Essays.

Autographs

by Alex Skovron

Hybrid Publishers

ISBN 978-1-876462-60-4

 

 

Reviewed by CAMERON LOWE

 

 

Autographs, Alex Skovron’s fifth collection of poetry, is a welcome addition to an already well-established oeuvre. Unlike Skovron’s novella The Poet (2005), which was burdened by an unconvincing narrative, the fifty-six prose poems that comprise Autographs are a return to his strengths. Most notably, these poems dwell on the seductions of time and memory, imaginings of the past within the present, and importantly, how these imaginings shape notions of self-identity. Although these poems display the distinct influence of Borges, they carry (to make a fairly lame pun on the collection’s title) Skovron’s own signature.

 

Having already mentioned Skovron’s novella, it is interesting to contemplate why these ‘prose’ works succeed in a way that The Poet—at least for this reviewer—did not. While these pieces appear, at least formally on the page, to be works of prose, their rhythm and imagery are more closely aligned to ‘poetic’ language. Although such distinctions can be arbitrary and misleading—and on a theoretical level possibly quite meaningless—it is hard not to feel that poetry is Skovron’s form, the genre in which his writing is most ‘alive’. Structurally, what these prose poems allow is a freedom from the linear narrative that characterised The Poet. Rather, the various thematic concerns already mentioned appear in Autographs as recurring motifs, giving the collection a fractured unity.

 

Autographs is in many ways an extended meditation on the past, a past that is always carried with us, where memory ‘caresses the hidden contours, moments which lived and died, and survive as a chorus of ghosts’ (p36). One of the inherent dangers in this emphasis upon the past, particularly when employing personal memories, is that the writing falls victim to nostalgia. Skovron is clearly aware of this potential pitfall and avoids it by making nostalgia itself one of the thematic concerns of the collection. In ‘Key’ this ambivalence toward personal recollection is directly addressed:

 

Don’t know why but I keep coming back to those glittering frames, perpetually rewinding the film. OK, call it nostalgia—that glorious pang somewhere between diaphragm and heart. I know I must seem preoccupied with nostalgia. (p31)

 

And later in the poem we are given an insight into these meditations upon the past, this summoning of childhood memories as a way, perhaps, of coming to terms with self: ‘Because childhood never really ends; it’s morphed into a future it must fill, a replica locked against itself. The key is lost, but you can feel it glinting there, deep within’.

 

Skovron appears to share Bachelard’s fascination with the poetics of space, so that many of these recollections of the past involve remembered places. A number of poems in the book’s second section, ‘Labyrinth’, such as ‘Room’ and ‘Chamber’, ‘Village’ and ‘Parks’, evoke the rooms and places to which memory faithfully returns, even if the narrator of these poems is aware that ‘some of the details are not quite correct’ (p32). ‘Village’, perhaps, best exemplifies this vivid imagining of place:

 

Ride down into the village heart, past the cinema screening Cousteau’s marks, where strips of discarded film lie about for small boys to skim. Wheel left into the main stretch, where the buses from Haifa stop, with snub noses, diesel perfume, lever-controlled doors. Past the hardware store with its gadgets, buckets and tools, the shopkeeper couple, your neighbours, whose bespectacled daughter is the friend who will forget you. Past the playground nook where you slipped between the spokes of a carousel, cracked your skull, cried bleeding all the way home. (p 26)

 

Many of the poems in Autographs possess a haunting quality that lingers long after you’ve returned the book to its place on the shelf. ‘Possession’, the second piece in the collection, is one such poem. Superficially, the poem is the story of a young boy who sees a similarly young girl holding a balloon:

 

The boy catches sight of the blue balloon. He is standing in the courtyard of a museum. He watches the girl who possesses the balloon. She bounces it along the asphalt, rolls it on the grass, bumps it into the air. The blue balloon fills the sky as it rises and dips. The boy is mesmerized by the balloon, he would like to possess one just like it…from that moment he can think of nothing but the blue balloon. (p4)

 

While this passage evokes a kind of childlike innocence, a sense of naïve wonder—and it should be said that nothing later in the poem explicitly disrupts this reading—there is a distinct feeling that other, less innocent emotions are surfacing here. The setting of the poem in a museum, with its ‘antique toys and artefacts, illuminated manuscripts, quaint instruments of music, replicas of weapons, photographs of notorious battles, a model torture-chamber, an ancient sarcophagus with its lid ajar’ is perhaps suggestive of a larger historical scope to this seemingly simple poem. There is a sense we are playing out something that has occurred before, something intrinsically human. Or, perhaps more pertinently, something intrinsically ‘male’, for the boy’s ‘delicious dream of the balloon’ may also be heralding the awakening of male desire and its less innocent aspects. Importantly, the poem leaves itself open to varied interpretations, allowing the reader to imagine this scene on a number of layers. 

 

While this textual layering works admirably in ‘Possession’, in some cases it seems somewhat contrived. ‘Neighbours’, for instance, which portrays a petty, yet long-running dispute between neighbours (and appears to be a metaphor for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict) is a little too cute, despite the sardonic humour: ‘In end, after we’d invested our best, sullied utterly each other’s abode—it stopped. They stopped, we stopped (I forget who began) (p13).

 

The final section of Autographs, ‘Shadow’, introduces us to the fictional character Kezelco, perhaps an alter ego figure to the narrative voice of the previous section. In many of these poems Kezelco acts as a kind of dislocated commentator on contemporary society, in part a participant and at the same time partly remote from ‘things he will never understand’(p41). In ‘Threshold’, where Kezelco purchases a replicant girl, we are treated not only to a fine example of Skovron’s sense of humour, but also a sharp observation on society’s fascination with the superficial:

 

The skin seems so alive—her flesh virtually glows, pulsates under his touch. He pulls back; scans the instructions in the operating manual, discovers wondrous secrets. Breasts subtly resizeable (‘pert, pleasingly nippled’); eyes digitally tuned (‘photoresponsive, with tracing focus’); the skin resilient (‘firm but not unyielding’); limbs and joints fully flexible, the hands miraculous (fingers ‘autonomous but utterly compliant’); buttocks immaculate (‘warm, superbly furrowed’); the mouth a marvel (lips ‘rich and creamy’, tongue ‘correctly moist’), programmable for gentle suction and/or sound…Kezelco feels he can grow to love this woman. (p59)

 

In counterpoint to Kezelco’s eccentric musings, ‘Shadow’ also features a number of poems that possess a disturbing, more threatening tone; or, to put it differently, these poems exhibit a sweeping, almost cosmic scope, one that challenges our perceptions of ‘human’ significance. ‘Fermata’ captures this beautifully:

 

And so the clouds dissolve, the old monuments crumble away, the children laugh at us, creaking in the wind; and December comes, dancing in the afternoon breeze. The light changes, time slithers to a stop, inhales, turns back on itself and is gone. Nothing has really altered, yet the world will never be the same. (p52)

 

Autographs is an impressive collection by an accomplished poet. One of the great pleasures of this book is not simply reading it but re-reading it, for it is a collection that rewards returning to. Skovron’s achievement in Autographs is to have crafted poems that are at once intimately personal and yet reach beyond this to offer a mysterious vision of the world. 

 

Julie Chevalier

Written by mascara on . Posted in Poetry.

Julie Chevalier is a Sydney poet and short story writer.  Her work appears in Antipodes, BlueDog, Famous Reporter, Island, Meanjin, Overland, snorkel, and Southerly.  

 

Women of Antiquity 2002 was joint runner-up for the Judith Wright Poetry Prize for New and Emerging Poets, 2008.  A Cylinder for the Tree Trunk won the National Short Story Competition 2009 run by the Society of Women Writers NSW.

 

She teaches at NSW Writers’ Centre, South Coast Writers’ Centre and Sydney WEA.

 

 

 

 

Hot Momma Angels of Gangland

 

Waiting for my flight I spotted Hot Momma Angels of Gangland, Taboo Tattooed Chicks, Paparazzi Razor Murders and Sharks at the Bar so I ventured over to the bloke reading The Stoned Zone at the cash register and said, ‘Any big gold-embossed airport poems?’  ‘Poems don’t sell,’ he said.  I know poets are charitable so asked, ‘Freebies?’  ‘Against company policy.’  He clamped his lips.  ‘Any doorstopper short story collections then?’  He tried to sell me Music for Airports but I said I’d already been there and palmed him A pantoum for foggy circling.

 

 

the fall

against his sincere-blue poly shirt the returned serviceman carries a bouquet of daisies fresh from the petrol station … he’s come to the airport to meet his new RSVP best friend … a real looker if her photo is anything to go by … he needs more than this offering to compensate for posting a fifteen year old photo…his kid brother with the bedroom-eyes…he wonders if she’ll notice his own eyes aren’t green…his gamey knee…he was only nineteen…her email about midnight tangos … she’s flying Virgin — in your dreams — and here’s a woman crossing the tarmac carrying a bunch of flowers the yellow of her faded hair…she’s hurrying toward him as fast as she can with the sole of her orthopaedic boot built up so high

 

 

 

the airport curfew ends at 06:00

 

05:30.   attic skylights, braced

against dark and rain, admit soundwaves.

commuters are driving to the cbd,

 

their highway drone like planes idling. 

the blanketing hum turns to roar;

my stomach clenches.

 

double insulation lines the roof, but,

at 06:00 hours, planes abrade the 8/8 cloud cover

low hovering lights penetrate fog.

 

once, at a no airport noise rally

i marched with stentorian garbage trucks,

now they’re mustering bins

 

at the curb, as my alarm whoops it up

with some bird’s deet deet deet

and a van rumbling in the lane.

 

the western distributor drums

its all-weather thunder

and again i try to sleep

 

 

 

Jal Nicholl

Written by mascara on . Posted in Poetry.

Jal Nicholl’s poetry has appeared in Retort Magazine, Stylus Poetry, Famous Reporter, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, The Diagram and Shampoo Poetry.

 

 

 

Prelude

 

Conjecture what his studies were that year:

to ride a pony led by the harness

was far the largest part of his tuition.

 

Conjecture how he gathered in

the blackberry harvest; through what conceit

sucking, as he went, the juice of recognition.

 

Conjecture it was a rented domain¾

weevils in the grain-chute, dry vats in the dairy;

still, rule at that time was by divine commission.

 

 

 

On the Demolition of an Inner-City Housing-Estate

 

A discontinued pylon waves

Steel tendons that anneal

A stump that won’t let go the earth.

And, strange to say, that steel

 

Calls to my mind the tentacles

An invertebrate puts forth—

And thus, seemingly, on the sea

To again submerge the earth.

 

And the fact is there’s little here

But suffers a sea-change,

And turns to something rich—though far

From positively strange.

 

Ah! No more arguments by night

Over bail or heroin:

Pigeons and poverty alike

Have left on tattered wing.

 

***

 

And I will put my things away

As well, and throw away

All that I can of my life till now,

And set up house and stay

 

Where car-lots, fast-food and store-outlets

Are unevenly strewn

In clumps, like ethnic diasporas.

I’ll learn to live alone—

 

But still remain dissatisfied

As with a kiss on the cheek,

With the only answer you could give

To one who, for the sake

 

Of more than you acknowledge asks

Again: is my worth greater

Than my wages, the same, or less?

That you were of the latter

 

View then was clear, although you claimed

No answer could be found

To a question that—could I not see?

Was patently unsound.

 

 

 

Evening Piece (After Houellebecq)

 

Outside the shopping centre

A crowd is on the boil;

A crippled pigeon doesn’t ask

Whose tyger, or why so cruel,

 

But seeks the gutter; while, nearby,

A beggar holds his sign, and bears

The foreign students’ chatter

As saints submit to jeers.

 

I make my way down Swanston St.,

Passing electric signs

That point pseudo-erotically

Down stairs and back-lanes.

 

Oh, hi, It’s Adeline;

I make my excuse, and hear catcalls

Directed at a Doric-skirted

Pair of school-age girls.

 

The economy flourishes;

I try to breathe—my chest grows tighter;

And you will not appear.

I still love you, Rita.

 

 

“And Then They Were Gone”, by Rofel G Brion

Written by mascara on . Posted in Reviews/Essays.

Rofel G. Brion, Ph.D. is professor of interdisciplinary studies, literature and creative writing at the Ateneo de Manila University. Baka Sakali. Maybe by Chance, his first book of poems, won the Philippine National Book Award in 1981; he has published two more poetry collections since then.  He has been fellow at various literature and writing festivals, among them the Berlin International Literature Festival (2005) and the Mildura Writers Festival (2009).

 

 

 

When I was in grade school, I would wake up in the middle of the night and ask either  my mother or my father to sleep beside me.  I knew what frightened me.  I was afraid one of them would die.  I was afraid I would die.

 

            Even in college, I would take the bus home and be scared that I would perish in an accident, or I would come home and see either my father or my mother in a coffin in our living room.   Sometimes I even imagined a friend’s funeral.  Or mine.  Who would be there?  Who would cry?  Would anyone be happy?  Would anyone wish they had died with me?    

           

I’m afraid death fascinates me. 

            Maybe it’s because death has come too often to greet me.

            But part of me dies with every death I see.

            And that part I now try to recover with these stories. 

 

 

LOLA GUELANG, 1964

 

I imagine her supervising my birth, Lola Guelang, my mother’s mother.  I was, after all, born on her bed.  It was the only bed in the house my parents had built a year before I came.  My coming was quite an event, I am told, and I see Lola Guelang telling the midwife what to do when she couldn’t get the placenta out.  They had to call in Mamay Dudoy, my father’s uncle, our family doctor, who ran from his house two blocks away.  He had stood as principal sponsor at my parents’ wedding.  A few months before that, Lola Guelang had fainted when she found out that there would be a wedding.  She didn’t like my father then because she had heard that he gambled. After the wedding, however, she saw how hard he worked when she allowed him to take over her rice dealership, a business she had began by trading rice from Bulacan, her home province, to San Pablo, my father’s home town, and had single-handedly turned into the largest rice store in the San Pablo public market.  And when my father asked her to move in with them in the new house, Lola Guelang declared to everyone that she had found a new son.

    

She always liked drama, my twice‑widowed Lola Guelang, even when it wasn’t her own.  Every morning we listened to soap operas in the only radio in the house; this, of course, my father put in her room.  So I stayed in Lola Guelang’s room all the time, watching her comb her long, grey hair, mend her kimonas, or cry over the fate of her soap opera heroines.  When I was old enough to read, she listened to my stories about my comic book heroes as I pretended that I was swimming on her bed.

    

It was a large bed with a very firm mattress, perfect for diving from the windowsill.  I did that over and over again the night they took Lola Guelang to the hospital.  I see myself now, ten years old, too short for my age, jumping on her bed, worried sick, not knowing exactly what was wrong.  I found that out for myself later on, when they took me to see her in the San Pablo City Hospital, then later at the San Juan de Dios along Dewey Boulevard.  I knew she had cancer by the time they took her back home; they cleared our living room and put in a hospital bed.  I watched relatives, friends, and strangers stream in and out of our house.  Some of them slept on Lola Guelang’s bed.  I didn’t care; I had grown tired of swimming on it.

    

One morning, I woke up to the sound of muffled sobs from the living room.  Lola Guelang was saying goodbye.  My mother took my hand and led me to her bedside.  I stood beside Ate Minda, my cousin whom Lola Guelang had sent through medical school.  When Lola Guelang saw me, she made Ate Minda promise to take me with her to the States so she could send me through school.  Ate Minda did, and my mother cried.  I don’t know if it was because she was grateful to Ate Minda, or because she was sad that her mother would go at any moment, or because she was afraid she would lose her only son.    

    

Lola Guelang didn’t leave us that day.  She lived for a few months more.  Long, very long, months.  I went to school every day, afraid that she’d be gone when I came home.  Sometimes I’d catch her laughing with her visitors and I would begin to believe that she could be well again.  But one afternoon, she finally left us.  I watched as her children, my sister, and our cousins surrounded her bed.  I couldn’t join them.  Nobody held my hand to lead me to her.  I was scared to come on my own.  I didn’t say goodbye.

    

Twenty years later, I wrote this poem on my own bed, in my own room, in a much bigger city, away from home:

 

 

GRANDMA ISN’T HOME

 

Grandma wasn’t home

So I dove and I swam

All over her huge bed.

 

They had taken her out

Very early that day In a big white van.

 

But she was very soon back

So I sulked as I sat

At the foot of her bed.

 

She lay and she smiled

As I sulked and I sat

And wished for my waves.

 

Then one sunny day

They came in a black van

And took her away.

 

I smiled through my tears

As I dove and I swam

All over her big bed.

 

 

TIYO LAURO, 1966

 

When I was five, Tiyo Lauro came home with a gift for my sister.  A doll’s eye.  It scared me terribly, but everyone else laughed, including my sister who for months had begged him for  a walking doll.  It took me some years to understand that it was a joke.

    

You see, Tiyo Lauro, my mother’s younger half‑brother, a bachelor who lived with us on week‑ends, worked at the Bureau of Customs in Manila.  My family knew another man who worked in the same place and this man was rich.  He brought home imported chocolates, battery‑operated toys, sweaters and shoes and bicycles, everything a child could ever wish for; we knew all this because he was the father of the wife of one of my first cousins.  Tiyo Lauro brought nothing home but his dirty clothes for our maids to wash.  Well, sometimes he would give me White Rabbit or Haw Flakes, or even a couple of apples in December, but nothing more than that.  And yes, that doll’s eye for my sister that everyone else found funny.   My mother asked him once why the other customs man had so much while he had nothing but he said nothing.  He was like that.  He usually said nothing.  And when he said something, it was to tell me not to do this or that without even telling me why.  I didn’t really like him.

    

I didn’t really know much about him.  When I was seven, I discovered some of his secrets.  He left his closet unlocked one Sunday‑‑he woke up late and rushed off to Mass‑‑and I found some girlie magazines inside it, along with some bullets and a periscope and a huge camera with a big flash.  He loved taking pictures of all sorts of things.  Once I saw his pictures of the World Boy Scout Jamboree in Los Banos and of a bullfight held somewhere in Manila.  He also had pictures of our relatives who lived in Mindanao; he visited them often and came home with all sorts of strange things‑‑a deer’s skull, horns and all; a monkey’s breast, cut‑up and salted; a plaque full of miniature swords. 

    

I can’t forget what Tiyo Lauro did one election period.  I was eleven and precocious, as my father always put it, and while everyone else in the family campaigned for Macapagal, Tiyo Lauro insisted Marcos would win.  The more I begged him to vote Macapagal, the more he praised Marcos.  He said Macapagal had done nothing for the country and Marcos was smart and young and was the hope of the land.  We ended up with me shouting at him and him laughing at me.  I decided then that I hated Tiyo Lauro.  On election morning, however, he called me into his room and showed me his sample ballot.  It had Macapagal’s name on it. 

 

Marcos won anyway but Tiyo Lauro and I never fought again.  I don’t even remember being mad at him after that, although I don’t really recall having a good time with him either.  I just know that I stopped hating him. 

    

One midnight, two years after Lola Guelang’s death, I woke up and found my mother crying beside my father who was talking to someone on the phone.  Tiyo Lauro had been shot.  Dead.  It was a hold‑up in a jeepney, my father was told.  But when Tiyo Lauro’s flag‑draped coffin came to our house for the wake, we discovered the real story.

Tiyo Lauro had been a customs secret agent all along.  That was why he never brought anything home.  He was about to bust a smuggling syndicate when they did him in.  The night he was murdered, he took a jeepney home, as he had done every single night.  He sat beside the driver, and a man came up behind him and shot him through his left shoulder.  The bullet, just one bullet, went straight to his heart.

    

We found out something else, or at least we still think of it as something, the following afternoon, when some people who introduced themselves as his office‑mates came to the wake.  One of them, a woman in a grey dress, spent a long time looking at Tiyo Lauro.  We, my cousins and I, spent as much time watching her.  When she lifted her dark glasses and wiped her eyes with a handkerchief, we knew we were  on to something.  No one, of course, dared to ask her who she was.  Not even my mother.  She was too busy grieving.

    

I had not seen my mother cry as much as she did then.  Not even during Lola Guelang’s funeral.  I found out why when we laid Tiyo Lauro to rest.  When we got to the family plot, my mother sobbed over Lola Guelang’s grave.  She asked for her mother’s forgiveness; she should have watched over her younger brother more, she cried over and over and over again.  Even as a soldier gave Tiyo Lauro a gun salute; even when a bugler played taps. After a few weeks, I saw a picture of my mother, puffy‑eyed, standing with their siblings in front of Gate One of Port Area, under a huge sign that read, "Agent Lauro de la Cruz Gate".

    

Many years later, and thousands of miles away from home, I paid my own homage‑of‑sorts to Tiyo Lauro, in a poem about, of all things, my father’s gun.  I’m sure Tiyo Lauro, silent and absent as he often was, will see some humor in appearing unnamed in an‑almost‑parenthetical remark in a rather long poem written by a nephew he knew very little about and who knew very little about him.

 

 

HALINA                                                     THE LURE

 

Kinagisnan ko na                                           I grew up

Ang baril ni Itay.                                            Knowing my father’s gun.

Nakatago ito                                                 He kept it

Sa makapal na supot                                     In a thick cotton bag

Kasama ang mga kahon                                With boxes

Ng maliliit na punglo                                      Of small bullets

Sa kanyang aparador.                                   In his closet.

Kung minsan                                                 Sometimes,

Kapag may nabalitaan                                   Hearing of a robbery

Siyang nakawan kung saan                            Somewhere in the city,

Itinatabi ni Itay                                              My father slept

Sa pagtulog ang baril;                                    With his gun;

Ilang araw iniiwan                                         For days he’d leave it

Sa ilalim ng unang                                          Beneath the pillow

Madalas kong dantayan                                That I loved to hug

Kapag naglalambing ako                               Everytime I snuggled up

Sa kanila ni Inay.                                          To him and my mother.

 

Madalas kong panoorin                                 I often watched him

Ang paglilinis ng baril‑‑                                 Clean his gun‑‑

Isa‑isang tinatanggal                                      He’d remove the bullets

Ang mga lamang punglo                                 One by one

Saka pinupunasan                                         Then wipe it clean

Ng nilangisang tela;                                        With an oily cloth;

Pagkatapos sandaling                                    Then for a few moments,

Ipadadama sa akin                                        He’d let me feel

Ang kinis, lamig                                             The smoothness and hardness

At tigas nitong baril.                                       Of this cold gun.

 

Tuwing magpapalit ang taon                           On the last night of each year,

Itinututok ito                                                  My father aimed the gun

Ni Itay sa langit                                              At the sky

At mabilis na pinapuputok                              And quickly fired it

Nang anim na uli;                                           Six times;

Isang Bagong Taon                                        One New Year’s eve

Pinahawakan ni Itay                                       He let me hold the gun,

Sa akin ang baril,                                           He made me aim at the sky

Pinaasinta ang langit                                       And told me to pull the trigger;

At pinakalabit ang gatilyo;                              Just once, he said,

Minsan lang, sabi niya,                                   But I did it

Ngunit inulit‑ulit ko.                                       Again and again.

 

Nang magbinata ako                                      When I became older

Inalok ako ni Itay                                           My father offered me

Ng sarili kong baril;                                        My own gun;

Mabuti raw na pananggalang                          It would be a good shield

O kaya’y babala                                             Or a fair warning, he said,

Sa may masamang tangka.                             To anyone who meant bad.

Hindi ko tinanggap                                         I refused it

Dahil hindi ko malimutan                                 For I could not forget

Ang umagang dumating                                  The morning when I saw

Sa aming tahanan                                           In our own home

Ang mga damit na duguan                              The blood drenched clothes

Ng kapatid ni Inay                                          Of my mother’s brother

Na kinitil ng punglong                                     Killed by a bullet

Tumagos sa kanyang puso;                             That penetrated his heart;

Samantalang humihikbi                                   As my mother sobbed

Binuklat ni Inay                                              She unfolded the shirt

Ang kamisadentrong                                      With a hole on one sleeve.

Sa manggas lang ang butas.                            It was a clever assailant,

Mahusay ang salarin,                                      I said to myself;

Sa loob‑loob ko,                                           He knew by heart

Kabisadong‑kabisado niya                            A bullet’s chosen path.

Ang hilig ng punglo.                                        But up to this day,

 

Subalit hanggang ngayon                                Everytime I open the closet

Tuwing bubuksan ang aparador                      Or lie on my parents’ bed

O hihiga ako sa kama nina Itay                       I am tempted to pick up

Natutukso akong damputin                            My father’s gun,

Ang kanyang baril,                                         Feel the cold,

Damhin ang lamig, kinis                                  And the smoothness and the hardness,

At tigas nito,                                                  Fit my finger around its trigger

Isukat ang hintuturo                                        And once more

Ko sa gatilyo                                                 Pull it very hard.

At muli itong kalabitin

Nang mariing‑mariin.

 

 

 

DORIS, 1988

    

"Doris of Paris".  That was what one Jesuit called her, not just because she lived and studied in Paris for several years and spoke what native French speakers said was impeccable French, but also because she seemed to have brought Paris home with her.  At least that’s what our friends who had lived in Paris, too, used to say.   I had only been to Paris once, for a few days, so I wasn’t sure I knew exactly what they meant.

    

I was sure, however, that Doris was no Parisian when I first noticed her.  I remember the moment well.  My girlfriend and I were in the Ateneo faculty lounge sometime in 1980 when she made me aware that there was a Doris Capistrano teaching Math in the college.  "There," she whispered, referring to a thin, young woman with long, black hair, and a very long, frilly dress, lining up for lunch in the college cafeteria.  "Isn’t Doris attractive?"  No, I whispered back to her, and meant it.  She looked much too conservative to be attractive, I added.   

    

Things changed, however, after Doris had received her masteral degree in math in Paris and I had broken up with my girlfriend.  Doris came back to teach in Ateneo and we ended up in the same circle of friends.  She was definitely attractive and not just because she wore her hair and her skirts short‑‑her eyes lit up as she talked about Paris and math and food and poetry. She was enthusiastic about almost everything, and she showed it not only as she talked but also as she walked and jogged and did almost everything else. 

    

I eventually saw her doing almost all sorts of things when she moved into the campus and became a prefect in the dorm next to where I lived.  I helped fix up her room and she spent a lot of time in mine.  We watched television and listened to tapes; she cooked while I ate and washed the dishes until she decided I should cook, too, so we suffered through some dishes together; I introduced her to my younger friends and  she told me about the boyfriend she left in Paris‑‑a young flautist who played around a lot.  Yes, I listened to her heartaches.  And she listened to mine.  

    

We never cried to each other, though.   We almost always laughed together. We went out with friends who loved the same things we did‑‑movies, parties, food, concerts, travel, clothes.  Yes, clothes.  Dressing up, for Doris, was an art, along with sketching, painting, designing, sewing, making patchwork wall hangings, all of which she also did, and did quite well.  Everything had to be right, and to be right, it had to be different.  And she made sure people appreciated her art.  Once, during a faculty party, she made me guess how many ribbons she had on her.  I guessed and missed two; they were embroidered above the heel of her black stockings.  Yes, her art was also a game.

    

For Doris, even work was a game.  She enjoyed math immensely and she even managed to make me understand how high math was much like literature‑‑you create imaginary worlds with their own laws and, well, world views.  She did her work diligently‑‑she taught and studied math, tutored some high school kids, gave private lessons in French.  But every time she had to work she’d say, "Well, I’ll have to go and pretend to work again".

    

She couldn’t pretend that she was fine, though, when she finally realized that the flautist had found another woman.  She kept to herself and wouldn’t tell me how she felt.  I worried about her, but there was nothing anyone could do for Doris if she didn’t want them to do anything for her.  Doris was stubborn.  That part of her I didn’t like.  But I waited.

    

It took some time, but she finally got over that man.  It was partly because she met another‑‑a young Belgian consul.  At once, she knew, and we, her closest friends, knew, that they were perfect for each other.  He even knew how to court her friends.  He drove from Makati to jog with us around Ateneo; he took us out of town in his car; he gave parties for us in his house.  Most of all, like Doris, he showed interest in what we did, how we felt, who we hated, who we loved.  

    

One Thursday evening, after judging a contest in the dorm, Doris and I shared some beer in my room; the consul had some diplomatic chores.  She and I had not talked for some time before that evening, and she began by asking me about my young friends, naming each one as she did.  After I told her what they were up to, she asked me how I was.  I told her I had a cyst on my back and that I would undergo a minor operation that coming Saturday; I confessed that I was scared‑‑after all, the cyst could be malignant.  She laughed that off and said, "So, what will you leave me if you die?"

    

I asked her how she was, how she and the consul were, and if her parents knew about him.  She said she felt he loved her and she loved him too, and that they had talked about a future together, but nothing was definite, so she had told her parents nothing about the relationship.  Her mother had seen her through her last heartbreak, and Doris didn’t want her to be anxious again.  Not that early, anyway.

    

That weekend, while I nursed a punctured back and worried about the biopsy result, Doris drove with the consul to Taal, to meet some friends and motor to the volcano.  I came back to Ateneo on Monday and found a note on my door.  The head prefect wanted to talk to me about something.  But before I could see him, a friend called.  She told me Doris had been murdered.

    

She tried to explain how it had happened but I couldn’t even listen.  I rushed to the bathroom, I don’t know why, but I did, and I remembered how I used to wash the dishes in the sink after dining with Doris, how she wouldn’t allow her boyfriend to shower in her bathroom after jogging so he had to use mine, how she made fun of my "nervous bladder".  And I cried.

    

I rushed to the morgue and found Doris on a stretcher, her face bloated for having been under the sun for hours after she died.  Our other friends were there, too, discussing what Doris would have wanted to wear for the very last time.  We knew, as we grieved, how important that was to Doris.  It would have to be the brown suit her boyfriend had given her.  But it couldn’t be.  Her mother wanted her to wear an embroidered gown, something we all knew Doris wouldn’t be caught dead in.  But we also knew that Doris would have laughed  that one off; after all, a funeral could just very well be another game for her‑‑she could say she was just pretending to be dead.  Just as she could say that she was, all along, just pretending to live.  It was as if she knew how her life would be so short; everything just had to be a game, everything just had to mean joy.            

    

We never found out why Doris was murdered.  She had been shot from behind, just one bullet  piercing her chest.  Later, I saw a picture taken a few hours after she had died, why it was taken I never really knew for sure.  She lay on a cart; she wore a light blue chambray shirt, deep blue denim pants, light blue sneakers, and shocking pink socks‑‑so very Doris.  Her face showed no sign of pain.  Thank God, I thought, she must have heard that shot and thought that someone was just bird‑hunting.  She might have even wished she could join their game.

    

That did not console me, however.  I remember crying many, many times for Doris‑‑during the wake in the college chapel; during her funeral; during the afternoons I was alone in my room, imagining Doris calling out my name from outside.  No friend had died on me before, I told everyone, and I never imagined it could bring such pain.   I cried as I read the many poems written about her, for her, by the people she loved, by the people who loved her.  I couldn’t write one myself, even if, after only a few weeks, I found myself returning to the usual run of things‑‑waking up, eating, teaching, having fun, playing all sorts of games, and doing all sorts of things as if Doris had not died. 

    

After a year, when I found myself very much alone, during a very cold spring many miles away from home, not too distant from the city that Doris loved, this came:

 

NGAYON LAMANG MASASABI                I CAN ONLY SAY THIS NOW

Kay Doris                                                                                For Doris

 

Nang yumao ka                                                When you died

Nang biglang‑bigla                                           Rather suddenly

Naghinagpis ako                                               I grieved

At lubhang nangulila                                          And longed for you deeply

Ngunit pagkaraan                                             But after

Ng iilang araw                                                  Only a few days

Mabilis na nakabalik                                         I quickly returned

Sa nakagawian nang                                         To the usual                 

Takbo ng buhay.                                               Run of things.

Sandali ko                                                        This alarmed me

Itong ikinabahala,                                              For a moment,

Tulad ng saglit                                                   Like the brief anxiety

Na pagkabagabag                                            About my thinning hair

Sa pagdalang ng buhok                                     When I look into the mirror

Sa aking tuktok                                                After I wake up each morning.

Pagtingin ko sa salamin

Tuwing ako’y gigising.

 

 

AND, YES, THERE WERE OTHERS

   

Yes, there were others after Doris.  They passed away in very quick succession, not even leaving me enough time to grieve in between.  I know it may be too early for me to write about their deaths, but I can not stop now.  I will not. 

    

I want to write about Kuya Nelson, his mother’s favorite son.  The beautiful one, she bragged.  He grew up to be a pretty boy, so pretty girls couldn’t resist him.  He had girlfriends anytime, and everywhere.  At nineteen, he was forced to marry his teacher, after her brothers caught them making love in their classroom.  She eventually left him, and he took up with a younger woman, fathered her children,  lived in different homes with other women, and ended up with so many children no one even tried to keep track of how many they were and where they stayed.  At forty, he lost the woman he lived with to a couple of farm workers who hacked her to death because Kuya Nelson had treated them badly.  He, too, suffered deep wounds in his chest and legs, but lived to take in another woman.  Once, when she gave birth, one of his other lovers came to care for her and her baby.  Later, Kuya Nelson began an affair with a soldier’s wife; he also "exported" female entertainers and dabbled in local politics.  Three years ago, Kuya Nelson and his eldest son were riddled with bullets as they approached the gate of their farm.

 

I want to write about Tiya, my father’s eldest sister.  She who quit school to support her brothers and sisters.  She who opened a store, traded all sorts of things from all sorts of places, and sent her nephews and nieces to school for she never had her own child; she who watched over my sister when she left San Pablo to study in Manila; she who was too old to travel when it was my turn to live away from home.  Tiya’s wards all left her, some she proudly sent off to America and Canada, some she drove away from her house in rage.  She ended up alone in her house, waiting for visits and dollars and whatever little love came her way.  I sometimes made her smile, with a wave, or a gift, or a kiss; often I just ignored her for she had become bitter and nasty and cruel.   But she lived on, until she could hardly hear, until she could hardly walk, until she could hardly care whether or not anyone else cared about her. A few months ago, a stroke took her life.  During the wake, relatives and friends filled her house.  The ones she loved most, the nephews and nieces she had proudly sent off to America and Canada, couldn’t come.  They sent dollars instead, and instructions on what should be done to whatever Tiya had left behind.

    

I want to write about Berms, my friend, the one who treated me like a brother for he never had a real one.  We went to college together, lived in the same dormitory, had the same set of friends, shared each other’s clothes and food and home and secrets and dreams.  He wanted to be a politician.  Through college,  law school, government service and private practice, he made and lost all sorts of friends.  But he was faithful, very faithful, to some‑‑we he played mahjong with, we the victims of his practical jokes, we the godparents of his children, we he opened his home and his heart to, we who stayed with him until the very end. We discovered he had cancer a month before he died.  He knew immediately how sick he was; there was nothing you could hide from Berms.  We saw him hope he would survive his illness and travel with us again.  We saw him eventually accept the inevitability of death, trusting his God to keep him and his wife and his children in His care.  Later, we saw him question that same God and reject whatever consolation we tried to offer him.  And then one evening we saw him make peace with the same God, and make sure that we‑‑his wife, his children, his mother, his cousins, his friends‑‑were one with him in meeting that God and one with each other in living through his passing.  But this could not diminish the pain his leaving left us.  Left me. 

    

I am still in pain.

     

I have not recovered the part of me that died with him. 

    

I have not recovered the part of me that died, too, with Lola Guelang, Tiyo Lauro, Mr. Ongpin, Doris, Kuya Nelson and Tiya.

    

I don’t know if I ever will.

 

                                                                                                                    Loyola Heights

                                                                                                                    22 September 1994

Brian Park: “The Return of Jack and Johnny”

Written by mascara on . Posted in Fiction.

Brian Park was born and raised in New Jersey and graduated from Rutgers University with a bachelor’s in English Literature.  After graduation, he moved to Seoul, South Korea where he currently resides. He has travelled throughout much of the last few years, which is the basis for the stories he has written.

 

 

The Return of Jack and Johnny

Serena and I parted over a cup of Lao coffee. She was going to stay in Pakse and I was going to get on a bus to Stung Treng, Cambodia.  My trip was nearly at an end. I only had five days left.

            We sat there talking about Lao coffee, about the plateaus where it came from, the high and misty jungle villages she would soon be visiting, and found ourselves staring at the grounds at the bottom of the mug with nothing else to say.  I told her she would have a great time in Pakse and she wished me luck in Cambodia and a safe trip back to New York.  I picked up my bag and hoisted it over my shoulder again.  Here was our fork in the river, so we watched each other float away laughing.  So goes another goodbye in the morning. 

            An hour later, I was riding in the back of a covered-truck driving towards the southern border of Laos and Cambodia through the flat plains and fields of yellow-green grasses.  The back of the truck was lined with two benches on either side so we could ride facing each other or lean out to watch the countryside pass by.  The women covered their heads and their faces with scarves so only their eyes were showing.  The school-children sat silently, patiently waiting, speaking in secret conversations amongst each other, riding hours away from home for whatever reason, something in the city.  At some rest-stops along the way, brief as they were, the sides of the truck would suddenly become filled with food and hands and down on the ground the eyes and faces of girls trying to sell the little bundles they had.  I bought plenty of food to eat along the way.  Sticky rice rolled in bamboo was essential.  The chicken a godsend.  The lychee branches a much needed touch.

            And then sometime around noon, when the sun was high in the sky and burning its intense yellow light over the lush fields of green, the truck stopped and I was motioned to get out.  I was one of the last ones left in the truck.  Where the rest of them would go, I did not know.  Where I was, I did not know.  All I knew was this was where one ride would lead to another, and then another, until at the end of the day I would finally get there.  I had done this all before.  I knew the system well.  There was a motorbike parked at this small crossroads in the middle of nowhere and that’s where I got on.  I waved goodbye to the kids left in the covered-truck and then got on the back of the motorbike.  We rode through the fields and then took a shortcut through an emerald green forest down one long dirt path in the middle of the woods.  I was having flashbacks of falling but feeling peaceful for the trees surrounding me.  And then we arrived at the border and the peace stopped.  Here were the complications.

            The guard sitting at the border was a rough intimidating character, a person who seemed like he hated his job.  Perhaps he was angry over the little amount of power he had in the destiny of the world and had to compensate by controlling the destinies of those who came to his gate.  I had come to the wrong gate, he told me.  I had to get a visa at the other gate. 

            “How much is the visa?” I asked, even though I already knew, just to see if he would jerk me around.

            “Twenty-five dollar,” he told me with that hard look on his face.

            “How am I supposed to get there?”

            “You figure out!  There are driver over there,” he yelled and pointed.  I felt my blood rising and struggled to suppress Jack Bauer.  Nobody yells at Jack Bauer and lives to yell again…

            “Ok, take it easy, Jesus Christ…” I muttered and walked towards where he was pointing.

            The border consisted of the guard shack, the roughly built wooden office, and a small family-owned restaurant with a wooden overhang where currently five or six boys and girls sat quietly in the shade playing on the dirt floor; the two drivers, one with black sunglasses and the other with a blue-striped polo shirt, stood about laughing and talking with the motorbike guy who was apparently a friend of theirs.  The fish had begun to fry.

            “Hi, how are you doing?” I said amiably, concealing my suspicion.  I could already see a three-pronged effort on the cooperation of these drivers to try and shake me of what precious bills I had left.  I was down to my last hundred-dollar bill.  Besides that, I had a handful of kip which would soon be obsolete.  In Cambodia, the currency is riel, but like Laos, dollars talk the loudest.  Prepare for the ugly surprise.

            “Hello,” the one in the blue-striped shirt said.  “Do you need a ride?”

            “Uh, yes.  Apparently, my driver,”I said nodding my head towards the dirty and deranged motorbike driver, now looking like an escaped mental-patient with his helmet off, “took me to the wrong border.  So I need a ride to the visa office and then to Stung Treng.”

            “Stung Treng,” blue-stripes guy repeated thoughtfully.  “Stung Treng, maybe we will do for fifty dollar.”

            “FIFTY DOLLAR?!” I shouted. 

I hadn’t meant to lose my cool so early.  My plan was to, with calm and Oscar-worthy hustle, ask their price and then pretend to lose interest saying, “I guess I’ll just walk there”, or “Eh, nothing to see in Cambodia anyway.  Well, thanks anyway fellahs,” ever so casually walking away whistling a tune as they called after me asking me to name my own price.  But the shock of his first price was so great, I nearly lost it.  All I could think was, “Oh my god, what if it really is fifty dollars?  I’m screwed!” 

I quickly regained composure, the little boys and girls and the puppies and the soft yellow chicks now looking at me from the cool dirt floor.  And then blue-stripes guy added,

“And you must pay the motorbike… (He conversed in Lao with the motorbike guy)… ten dollar.”

“PAY THE MOTORBIKE GUY???  TEN DOLLAR???”

They were quite curious about my reaction.  “These foreigners sure do have quick tempers”, they must’ve been thinking…

I was pacing back and forth now, calling the only one I could rely on in a situation like this.  It was time to resurrect J.C… Johnny Cochran!!!

“Now hold on, hold on, hold on just one minute.  Let me get this straight gentlemen,” I said walking before the jury of children, puppies, and chicks, “let me make sure I’m clear.  You’re telling me, the ride to the visa office is double the amount of the visa itself?  Preposterous!  And you,” I said, now addressing the motorbike guy, “it seems rather curious that you would take me to the wrong border, just where your two friends happen to be standing around waiting.  Tell me sir, how long have you known these two gentlemen?”

Motorbike guy gave me a puzzled look and looked to blue-stripes guy for help.

“We work together for many year,” blue-stripes guy answered for him.

“Yes, I’m sure you have.  Bringing people to the wrong gates and then SKYROCKETING THE PRICE!  Gentlemen,” I said leaning in now, “I’ll tell you what I’ll do.  I’LL TELL YOU WHAT I’LL DO,” I said making a big show for the children, puppies, and chicks who now stared at me with wide-eyes,

“I’m going to forget the insult of that first asking price.  I’m going to PAY THIS MAN,”I said loudly so all could hear and bear witness as I counted out wrinkled bills of kip into the bewildered motorbike guy’s ripped and dirty glove, “I’m going to PAY THIS MAN the amount that I feel HIS SERVICES earned him this day.  Now let’s see, we rode on the dirt road for about thirty-minutes, at about fifty miles per hour… who’s good at math here?”

“Sir,” blue-stripes guy said stepping in, “that is not enough.  Do you have dollar?”

“I don’t know… do you have a car?”

He looked at me with a puzzled expression. 

“Alright, let’s end this.  I don’t have all morning,” I said, even though I really did.  “I’ll pay you fifteen dollars.  That’s fifteen,” I said showing them the hundred-dollar bill (I didn’t have change), “good old greenback Americana.  What do you say?”

“AND I’LL PAY THIS GUY,” I added motioning to the dirty and confused motorbike driver, “five bucks, which HE DIDN’T EARN, but just so we all go home happy?  Ok?”

They talked amongst themselves for a minute.  The children and puppies and baby-chicks looked at me with wide-staring eyes as I apologized to them silently for being such a jackass.  “The world made me this way,” I mouthed silently to them, but they didn’t understand.  Not yet anyway…

“It is too small,” blue-stripes guy said.  “Not enough to even pay gas.  Stung Treng many kilometer.  Take two hour driving.”

“What?  Hey, come on.  I could drive on twenty dollars easily in America!  Are you telling me—”

At that point, the-angry-guard-who-hated-his-destiny came up and began getting involved after hearing all of that yelling; deciding to take care of the small zone which Providence had left in his control.

“You must pay driver!” he yelled.  “You come to wrong gate!  You buy visa, then you go to Stung-Treng!”

“Stay out of this you goddamn deputy!” I snarled.  Jack Bauer was beginning to rear his larynx-cracking head from beneath the muddy waters…

            “WHAT?!  I’LL KILL YOU!!!” the guard screamed and grabbed his machine-gun as I quickly dived to the ground and pulled the revolver out of my ankle-holster, squeezing off three shots before hitting the ground…

            Just kidding.  That’s not what happened. 

            What actually happened was the guard came over.  We drank some tea and worked out our misunderstandings.  And it turned out that I was right, he really was unhappy with his destiny.  Who knew on that early afternoon on the border of Cambodia and Laos, two grown men would be crying in reconciliation…

            “You have to be tough in this business, you know?” blubbered the angry guard, “Do you know how many pedophiles and child molesters and drug addicts come through those gates every day?  You think I don’t want to smile?  You think I like yelling?  Every day, I wave these bastards into my country so they can corrupt and molest and destroy the innocence of my children, our children.  I have to be tough!  I have to be mean!”

            “I’m so sorry,” I said sympathetically, “If only those sons-of-bitches in Washington… It’s just this war keeps dragging on and on… and that lying son-of-a-bitch Johnson!”

            “Why do we do this to each other?” he asked with tears in his eyes.  “Why do people always destroy the things they love?”

            At about sunset, the ride to Stung Treng was complete.  I paid sunglasses guy the $20 we agreed on even though I knew I was being ripped off.  The motorbike-guy got $5.  That meant I had $75 left for five days.  Plenty of money for a short stay in Cambodia, as long as there were no more ugly surprises.  But there were always ugly surprises.  They grew everywhere like daisies concealing Africanized-bees hidden inside with itchy stingers on their asses.  And I was trying to stop and smell as many flowers as I could before that plane ride back to winter in New Jersey…

            Stung Treng is a small town built with wide-open streets and no traffic, dilapidated buildings that offered nothing.  In the centre of town was a small street-market which sold bootleg clothing and other knick-knacks.  There were small shops selling cigarettes and soap.  Barrels filled with ethanol where motorbikes would stop to refuel their small gas-tanks.  A few barbecue stands with no meat stood waiting along the sidewalk overlooking the blue Mekong River offering warm cans of beer and soda floating in coolers filled with water.  As far as the good old distraction of commerce was concerned, that was about all that I could see happening in Stung Treng.

            I was dropped-off in front of a guesthouse on a street near the city square and street-market.  The guesthouse had an open entrance into a sort-of lobby with some books and computers that didn’t work, some tables with dusty homemade menus.  It was an old rustic sort of building, the kind that didn’t instil much confidence or expectation, but instead simple resignation, a deep breath saying okay, how dirty is it going to be?  Fortunately for me, the room wasn’t the dirtiest I had been in so far, though it was certainly the ugliest.  The bed was a dingy thing with speckle-white sheets, a mirror on the headboard so I could I watch myself having sex with invisible hookers, rusty-brown stains of blood coagulation, the remnants of someone getting their head blown off while watching themselves having sex with invisible hookers.  The only upside was the bathroom didn’t smell like evil piss.  Be thankful for what you got.

            Before I wandered town till night, I decided to sit down at one of the wooden tables outside with a view of the river and the people walking around, playing hacky-sack in the street, and otherwise sitting around gambling and smoking and talking, riding by slow.  The menu was written in Chinese, English, and Khmer.  I wasn’t that hungry and was more or less just ordering food and a beer for the activity of eating and drinking and smoking and watching the golden glowing twilight of the river and the sunset streets.  What else was there to do?

            As I sat and waited for my meal to come, I looked at the message board on the wall next to my table.  It was mostly just flyers for other guesthouses in Phnom Penh and Siem Reap.  I took note of one for Siem Reap called something Gardens.  I didn’t bother writing it down.  I was sure I would have no problem finding it, as if there were no other guesthouses ending with something-Gardens… 

            And then as my eyes continued to roam, there was one flyer, which caught my eye, as it was clearly graphically-designed to do.  It said,

“PROTECT OUR CHILDREN FROM SEX CRIMES!!!  IF YOU SEE …” and featured a shadowy photograph of a grown man and a little girl… in any case, it was subtle and illustrative.

It was similar to the big sign I had seen at the border.  The sign encouraging people to report pedophiles if they saw any.  They’re everywhere in Cambodia.  Everyone knows that.  It was only months ago, platinum-selling British-pop has-been Gary Glitter was reported in these parts, a frequenter of the Indochinese region for the young pretty girls.  They kicked him out.  But many more less famous than he still roaming.  Report suspicious activity… as if it was that easy…

But then as I rolled my tongue in a mouth full of skepticism, I glanced at a table on the other side of the room.  They were the only other people at the tables at that time, four middle-aged white men sitting by themselves waiting for their food.  I saw them when I sat down obviously, but now something inside me stirred.  I began to look at them with a deep burning passion of justice in my eyes.  I felt The Diplomat rising…

Four middle-aged white men in Cambodia?  Just taking in the sights, eh? Cut the crap.  You make me sick…

It was the pancakes that convinced me.  When they received their food, I stayed watching (secretly) the skinny one methodically slice and chew his pancakes.  Drizzling the pancake syrup in slow perfect lines like the commercials, his knife pressing against the soft dough in perfect symmetrical triangles.  It’s well-known that pedophiles are neat-freaks and control-freaks.  Abusive child-hood, often abused for being messy as children… they hate filth, they hate it!  Love giving children baths, the fucking perverts… 

I watched him eating his pancakes slowly, chewing robotically, his eyes focused with the flavor of the maple syrup, the fucking bastard.  The rest of them carried on casually as if thinking nothing of the shameful wrongs they would commit against innocent children to fulfil their dark desires.  Coming to this land because of its weakness for money, its desperation, and the renowned beauty of its children.  I wanted to choke the pancakes out of that motherfucker until Aunt Jemima came and slapped me two times.  And even then I wouldn’t stop…

Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore.  I had to say something.  I couldn’t just let these sick-fucks come into this country and defile the innocence of children.  I wanted to smash the plates on their table and feed them the shards, the bastards.  So I stood up and said something.

“You guys think it’s fine?  Eh?  Dinner’s good?  Enjoying your dinner, eh?” I said transforming into The Diplomat, rounding their table, fingering their plates, dipping my fingers in the syrup and tasting it crudely in their faces.

“How are you guys enjoying your stay, hmm?  Everything is nice?  These shitty bedrooms holding up for you?  Watch yourself fuck any little boys and girls in that mirror yet?  Not before dinner, eh?  How nice,” I said my hands now on their shoulders. 

“I’ll give you guys five seconds, to get the fuck—”

Before I could finish my ultimatum of a proper Diplomat delivered ass-whipping, their wives came into the guesthouse and looked at me curiously, probably thinking I was the waiter.  The Diplomat was shot; he was crawling on the bathroom floor, a trail of blood as the urinals overflowed…

“And, I recommend the soup!  It’s excellent!”

I left before my food arrived.

         I couldn’t return to the guesthouse until nightfall.  I had arranged for a bus to Phnom Penh and then Siem Reap early in the morning.  As long as they weren’t on the same bus, I would be spared the humiliation and blubbering apology that would surely follow.  I spent the rest of the evening down by the river.  There were lots of people there, cleaning up for the day.  There were chickens tied up together and clucking under woven baskets.  Small silvery fish laid out on piled lines.  On the blue river, where the sun was now setting, the entire sky became blue twilight, and the river an even brighter shade of blue despite the depth of the sky.  In the water was a man washing his motorbike with love and care, making sure it was polished, bright, and clean so he could ride with pride through these defeated streets.  And then there were some naked boys dancing in the water, their mother giving them their bath in the same waters as the motorbike, the waters that gave them the silvery fish, the same waters that gave this small town with nothing just a little bit of something, that something that they had always had, that something that they would still have when everything else is gone. The old man sings of rivers…

 

 

Dona Samson Zappone

Written by mascara on . Posted in Poetry.

Dona was born in Malaysia of Sri Lankan parents. She migrated to Australia in 1981. Her work has appeared in Poetry Without Borders, Sun and Sleet Zinewest, Reunion WEA Poetry Project, Auburn Letters Zinewest, She has exhibited her artworks and design, and has a short film and a play to her credit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Muddy River (Malaysia)

 

  

a crocodile slides through the muddy river,
sampans glide with commuters
each stroke of the paddle closer and closer to shore
mangrove trees, their branches grasp like giant octopus
dance against the muddy river banks.
the river flows swiftly gathering dead branches
rubbish, household items, timber, gliding with the tide
this river once our childhood haven of mudcrabs and fishing
shimmers in the early morning sunshine
boats tied against the docks
now bob up and down in the murky water
an old wizened man sits, smoking a cheroot
watching fascinated, reminiscing the wonders of the river
a tourist boat advertising, ‘api-api’ tour of the mangrove swamp
is getting ready with his preparations for the night tourist
a shopkeeper is wiping down the outdoor tables and chairs
while Chinese music from a radio kills the serenity of the peaceful day
its just another day on the river in Kota Tinggi of my childhood.

 

api-api: fireflies        sampan: canoe

 

Woomera 
 
a ragged group of refugees
stood on a high roof waving a white sheet, like a flag-
‘freedom, freedom!’ they chanted in Persian, Dari, Urdu
Pashto an Africaan, in Indonesian and Vietnamese
 some wrenched the metal bars apart
others threw blankets over the razor sharp fences,
they climbed and squeezed through
to jump and hurl themselves into the crowd and run
from the arms of the waiting police
 
sewing their lips in protest
on hunger strikes for several days
queue jumpers, illegals, rejectees,
they were herded like animals
easier controlled and forgotten
they were locked away, questioned, watched and punished
long months of being detained inside this barred prison
                                                it had taken its toll
                                                brave, desperate, lucky?
                                                they risked all to find freedom
now stateless without a future
did they have a right for their freedom?
just because they spoke in tongues
did they have to be locked up like criminals?
there were women, children, young and old 
waiting for release from a nightmare called
‘W o o m e r a’

 

Form and Fashion in Stephen Edgar’s Verse: Michelle Cahill reviews “History Of The Day”

Written by mascara on . Posted in Reviews/Essays.

History Of The Day                                                    

by Stephen Edgar

Black Pepper Press, 2009

ISBN 9781876044626

http://users.vic.chariot.net.au/~bpepper/edgarhotd.html

 

Reviewed by MICHELLE CAHILL

 

             History of the Day is Stephen Edgar’s seventh collection. Acclaimed for his formal virtuosity, the painterly style of his images, and an objective, pondering engagement with his themes, his work stems from the modernist tradition for which temporal, aesthetic and moral categories are ordered into a wholeness: that which Stevens refers to as a “blessed rage for order,” and Adam Kirsch describes as “its unequivocally positive character.” But how relevant is Edgar’s quiet insistence on aesthetic and ethical authenticity in the discursive climate of postmodernity? His formal music might seem to be mannered, anachronistic, or elitist even, in its positioned detachment from the real. Reading History of the Day, might seem a foreign experience, rather like learning a new language, Edgar’s work being labyrinthine and at times recondite. His polished cognizance, his formally oblique and elaborate praise of things ordinary defies a trend in contemporary poetics. Seemingly removed from the lineage of Rimbaud, Lowell, Plath or indeed Adamson, his poetry is, if challenging, deeply satisfying for its clarity, its faithfulness to measured forms of language and thought.

            History of The Day is a collection of modesty and harmony. An outward sign of its grace is reflected in the book’s structure. Each of three sections are inspired by the epigraph taken from Lawrence Durrell’s Balthazar so that we move from poems which encounter the intimately personal, to the those of historical irony and philosophical inflection, followed by the last sequence, a miscellany, in which poems are addressed to other poets. Edgar’s acknowledged influences include WH Auden, Richard Wilbur, Anthony Hecht, as well as the Australian poets Gwen Harwood and Peter Porter, among others. His sensibilities are refined, at times overwrought; his preoccupations are with the relativity of time, space, destiny and history. A poem such as “Space” is a fine illustration of Edgar’s themes and style. Here, he takes a single image of a Treasury flag flapping in the breeze as an instance of the physicality of space as it exists in the mind’s eye. The images are visceral. They emphasise a perspective in which the flag is central: the way it “writhes” against the “muscled” breeze, the “distortions” of matter within “a moment’s frame”. The tangential observer, aware of time elapsing, journeys on towards the “day’s blue, contested edges.” Broken into stanzas the poem derives its form from the Italian or Petrachan sonnet, with some license exercised to the rhyme scheme in the octave. The beguiling simplicity of its subject, the elasticity of its iambic metre, and its refined contemplation are hallmarks of Edgar’s most impressive lyrics. It’s a poem that reconciles image, form and thought effortlessly, turning adroitly from minimalism to perceptual complexity.

           Space-time distortions are a principal concern for the poet. In many of the poems Edgar takes a phenomenological interest in experience and how it is structured consciously. His attention to the detail of these processes enables him to amplify scenes, embellish their dimensions and surfaces, so that time is almost warped, slowed down to the shimmering speed of thought. We hear this echoed in the marvellously speculative poem “Dreaming At The Speed Of Light”:

And every thought would undergo
This rallentando, every word
Would grind down to a halt
Midsyllable, interminably heard,
But charged with full intention even so,
And purity of tone,

                                                               (107)

            Quantum ironies resound within the poem’s weave of internal assonance and simple rhymes. Such poems exemplify the liberating and quirky possibilities of Edgar’s formal music.

            The situations and figures are often more emblematic than realistic, creating the mildly disturbing effect of defamiliarisation, so that we are excluded from the engendering of illusion. The subject matter, however benign, is nuanced with a disenchantment that falls short of defeat. This kind of alienation is modernist in its impulse. There is an almost Brechtian distancing effect which along with the historical referencing of many of the poems, imbues them with complex ironies.

            In “ Out of the Picture” Edgar dramatises the dual perspective of an Impressionist painting. On the one hand is the “unnoticed, unmissed” feminine figure who “saunters between/The poplars” out of the picture towards a forgotten ending. The last stanza suggests an alternate perspective of the painting’s observer, for whom it is

As pointless to depart as to delay:
In either course is folded the same space.
In Istanbul next year or here today:

                                                                (23)

            The attention given to the placement of figures, and to the spectator perspective with its minimalist interaction emphasises divisions between the viewer’s world and the picture space or the scene depicted, whether it be through a photograph of lynching as in the powerful evocation“ Those Hours Which Grew To Be Years”, through a dream, as in “Dream Works” or through a camera lens, as in “The Swallows Of Baghdad.” As a war poem, one could argue that “The Swallows Of Baghdad” pursues its ethical argument tentatively, leaning towards a tactful, aestheticised vision of war’s brutality. The swallows with their “flickering wings,” who dart through a “ruined roof/To perch on dreadful engines,” are twice removed from the observer, being reminiscent of  “a scene from Attenborough.” Edgar’s instincts are always on the side of aesthetics, though one feels the tension  between this principle and what is being represented. Moreover the poem attempts to eschew complacency in its ending lines:

A camera reeling in that chamber follows
Their lit flight, where—too recently to show—
The cameras turned to darkness for their proof.

                                                                  (53)

             The framing of scenes and narratives is one aspect of the poet’s architectonic finesse but it’s also a lens through which history and memory can be purposeful; intensifying and correcting time. This is beautifully realised in the book’s opening poem “Golden Coast’, in which natures’s ravages are compared to those of love. Edgar’s diction juxtaposes the idyllic with the hideous, as overdeveloped skyscrapers “make their mark, /Their ulceration of the golden coast/ whose beauties they would sell, Under the settling sediment of dark.”

            Metaphysical in its dialectic and reminiscent of Herbert or Donne, the poem illuminates how memory operates within a dimension that transcends time. The idyllic moment of love’s intensity is preserved :

This day unknown to time will be there when
The light drifts through the shallows like a ghost
And dies of hours, the skies
And earth fall down and chaos comes again.    

                (6)

             How many contemporary poets would dare voice such painterly abstractions, such affirmation? A reader who might resist a title such as “Golden Coast,” is convinced by the thoughtful accuracy of Edgar’s diction, which describes how “lights as laggardly as sound/ Struggle to make the passage of the gloom.”

             Like a Hopper painting, many of the poems play with a symbolic use of light and shade, and the careful placement of figures within a given scene. This attention to topographies and symmetry is distinctly metaphysical, an ordering principle pleasingly realised in “The Earrings”. The central conceit of a deceased lover’s earrings, gifted to a living spouse, play on the spherical as a symbol of nuptial unity, destiny, and the amatory universe. With adroitness the poet is able to reconcile loss with recovery, the ironic with the ardent, to unify

All of the properties,
           The pain,
Pleasures, desires, memories
That nothing will appease,
            Nothing detain,

                                                            (8)

             Chronological time does not correspond to memory, dream or to lived experience as the portals between past and present are traversed in language. Mystical encounters are celebrated: the dead speak, a doppelgänger contradicts himself, entering not a boardroom, but a museum “of lost antiquities”, the “mortared ghost of locomotion surges” in the sculptural form of a train. In the poem “Nocturnal,” Edgar’s prosody echoes a Keatsian ode in its iambic rhetoric:

Who ever thought they would not hear the dead?
Who ever thought that they could quarantine
           Those who are not, who once had been?

                                                            (17)

            The reader is moved and surprised by the poet’s wit. The discrepancy between the recorded and real voice of the poet’s deceased partner is metonymic of the breach between memory and presence, an impasse into which the poem enters.

            History of The Day is a book of Escheresque passages rendered by the effects of recollection, repetition and doubling: The past is “Undeleted,” Edgar writes, “What happened is embedded and repeated.” Speculative, ekphrastic or historical, the poems duplicate and tease semantic possibilities which we encounter in poems like “Parallel Worlds” or “Interior With Interiors”. This latter poem, inspired by a Ramon Casas painting depicts a scene where a woman and man are mutually abandoned to each other: she “self-absorbed”; he perhaps dreaming of bliss, a ‘total consummation” from which he might soon enough be dissatisfied, “wishing to be elsewhere.” The  artefacts of realism: coffee pot, milk jug and vase become little more than props, or “servants liveried to be ignored,” as the text, painting or poem opens to the world of boundless interiors.

            With idiosyncratic flair, Edgar probes the inner milieu. Yet a stronger dialectic between the individual and history than we have come to expect from him is voiced in this collection. The extrajudicial mob violence of white American supremacy is powerfully depicted in “Those Hours Which Grew To Be Years”. Here Edgar critiques the historical lens in his appalled response to photographs of Frank Embree’s and Rubin Stacey’s lynchings. The naked Embree is “stripped/And scored with the judicial script/Of whips,” but the poem returns a Christ-like dignity to his “composed face.”

             Here, at his most outraged, Edgar turns poetic style to indictment. He scrambles the metres. Rarely do we see him mix the insistent accents of dactyl with the iambic and anapaest in his prosody:

      Take him away
      Airbrush him out,
And all these men who stand about
In the clean light of day,

                                                              (48)

            In another poem from the sequence, a young white girl’s voyeurism is depicted with uncharacteristic and intended vulgarity:

Her hands crossed, mimicking his handcuffed hands,
On her frocked crotch, her naked face intense
And lit up with a half-embarrassed leer,           

                                                             (51) 

            These are poems in which the observer’s perspective, regardless of his nationality, class or race exceeds that of witness. Edgar brings into focus the crisis between the social juggernauts of supremacy and a humanist conscience.

            Whatever subject his poems address, no matter how grand or horrific, Stephen Edgar elegantly affirms an objective displacement, sometimes theatrical or emblematic, as moments of recollection, history, art and culture are revisited and referenced. This self-imposed distance renders him faithful to his aesthetic and ethical ideals. Repeatedly, in History Of The Day, what is beautiful is sustained by loss, to become the property of memory. The ravages of history are, at least partially, restored to dignity. Here is a work which dares, in a postmodern, Microsoft era, to entertain serious aesthetic contemplations. The speaker encounters notions of reality that are fragile, provisional and constructed within the infinite domains of space-time as he attempts to order

Dimensions at the heart of matter,
Immensities wound up, that mind

Cannot conceive?

                                                            (72)

 

 

Notes

Adam Kirsch, The Modern Element, WW Norton, New York, 2008, p 10

 

Anne M Carson

Written by mascara on . Posted in Poetry.

Anne M Carson is a Melbourne writer who is most happy immersed in creative projects.  She gave up social work to write, teach and produce visual art.  Her prose and poetry have been featured on local and National Radio and she has curated two PoeticA programmes on Radio National.  She has been published in a range of literary journals and anthologies including Best Australian Poems, 2005.  

 

 

 

The Hearse

All around us rude life swirls.  Our guests

mill in the vestibule, spill onto the footpath,

 

sharing grief and reminiscence.  No-one notices

the hearse pull out from the curb, the lead man’s

 

measured pace.  The air holds its breath –

an undercurrent shivers out like an eddy

 

stirring just a handful of leaves.  It brushes

my mind, prickling.  My sister notices too. 

 

The sky like a lid on a box, lowers.  Underfoot,

the bluestone is hard.  Death has us in a press. 

 

We turn in slow synchronicity, each sealed

in our own sling of sorrow.  Time opens,

 

draws us into a pocket of pain and departure. 

We watch the hearse move away with our father’s


unaccompanied body.  Around us, inside us,

molecules rearrange, adjust to his dying. 

 

 

Green Is The Colour

Wilson’s Prom 2009

Cloaked in convalescence, the landscape without foliage

resonates with loss.  Once forest, now individual trunks

stand out, painted the black of cinder and mourning. 

I know the theory – bush regenerates after fire, birds

 

return, rise from ashes.  But the burn here is heartbreaking

hillside after hillside – stubbled with match-stick thinness,

like the poor head-hair of chemo patients.  In some places

recovery is obvious.   Eucalypts have put on sleeves –

 

pressure bandages on burns victims you hope protects them. 

Elsewhere a moss poultice covers the earth, blanketing harm. 

No regrowth yet in the banksia forests – sounds are broken

and brittle.  Seedpods remain silent.  Their mouths will open

 

eventually, articulate with seed.   I’ll trust seeds’ eloquence,

their tumble into the waiting ashbed – kernels of thought

into earth’s imagination.   Green is the colour when

the regeneration wheel turns.   Shoots will appear, new ideas

 

nosing their way into life.   Already the grass trees thrive. 

From burnt beginnings, single, solid spears rear into space,

fields of lingams insisting on existence.  The tale of recovery; 

I want to be told it again and again, until I have it by heart.

 

 
 
Corfu Asklepion 
 
Beds align on the north-south axis.
Feet face out, heads in, a corridor between
Pods where we wrap ourselves,
Compose stories of the day before sleep.
 
We are the stamen round which our night
Petals furl; the stem where dream fruit grows.
Like the tundra wants rain, the wound wants the dream.
Salamander flare, lapse into sleep.
 
Let the Asklepian dog lick your lesions
The dream serpent bite you back to health.
Unwind the petals, the linens, the wings
Over wounds in the clean wind of night.
 
Dream on while the Dream Master
Walks the corridor between beds,
Walks between sleep selves, bestowing dreams.
Homoeopathically, just a little dream will do.
                                                                                              
Asklepius was the god of healing in ancient Greece. Patients visited his sanctuary, slept in the Asklepion and hoped for a healing dream. He was said to appear as a dog licking or a snake biting. 

Rob Riel reviews Andrew Slattery’s “Canyon”

Written by mascara on . Posted in Reviews/Essays.

Canyon

by Andrew Slattery

Australian Poetry Centre
ISBN 978-0-9804465-7-9
PO Box 284, Balaclava, VIC, 3183
 

 

Reviewed by ROB RIEL

 

 

 

 

             Canyon is a handsome chapbook, the cover stylishly sewn rather than stapled to the text. Publication in this form is a valuable initiative of the Australian Poetry Centre, similar in scope to the Five Islands New Poetry Series, and with very much the same objective: to encourage newcomers to the poetic craft. 

            Like Ron Pretty’s earlier enterprise, workshopping of new poets’ manuscripts is a central element of the program.  If publication is the carrot, a week-long intensive residential workshop at Varuna is the stick used to beat a good manuscript into a winning one.  It’s a proven formula going back to 1994; the vetting process works, and the list of successful applicants is distinguished.

 

            Without question, Andrew Slattery merits inclusion in 2009.  On the back cover, Peter Porter describes him as ‘an archaeologist of the Natural World.  He invents a Joycean script.‘  Slattery’s poetry is large, his voice original, his craft sharp.  When he is on song, he’s up there with the best.  That said, his wordplay tends to that excessive exuberance common to talented new writers — which is to say, he can’t pass up a chance to impress.  Hence a few über-Joycean passages in the style of Ulysses and Finnigan’s Wake might be described as overworked. This minor flaw can be willingly dismissed in a manuscript of such promise.

 

            Canyon is a rewarding read, not necessarily an easy one.  The first four poems employ a richly Arctic motif.  William Empson’s Ambiguity Type 1 involves detail, which is effective in several ways simultaneously, and this is one of Slattery’s strengths, as in ‘Arctic Circle, Sweden’:

 

… In the distance a bull elk

lay across one track; the brown slump of weight

rolled into the ground with a span of antlers

 

like petrified angel wings.  When Dad tied them off

with rope at my back, I walked the way home,

but it was like I could fly, with wings of bone

lifting me over the rocks in the midnight sun. 

 

            Two pages later, the title poem Canyon shifts the stage underwater. Here, Slattery limns the vast depths and utter magnitudes of ocean ex ungue, leonem; from the squid, we may fairly observe and admire the whole sea:

 

The giant squid spools along canyons

cut from the ice age — movements

 

aggrandised over time, its organ pipes

roll the sea bed with solitary rills,

hear its weight unlying the sea.  

 

           It’s a strong poem, and none the worse for having appeared elsewhere under the title ‘Bathey Pelagium‘ — identical text, albeit with different (and, to this reviewer’s mind, superior) line breaks.  At least three other fine poems in this 24-page chapbook (‘Lithographone’, ‘Post Office’ and ‘The Rural Piano Rescue Project’) have also been previously published, some as competition prize winners.

 

            Slattery moves on to a more recognisably Australian landscape in the second half of the collection.  ‘Somniform’ has some impressive sequences …

 

Calf and cloud and their cummulant fill

unfurl its new tongue and slup a cloud.

 

The other cows and their dark, bowed heads.

The poppy deflates the balloon in your chest.

Lay on my back, suck slow on the clouds.

The whole world made of stupor.

 

           … though I stumbled somewhat over ‘cummulant’; it’s a statistical term, usually spelled with one ‘m’, and probably chosen for its sound — Slattery is a closet sound poet, which benefits his work when he doesn’t carry it too far.  A few lines later, though, he consults Joyce once too often:

           

This disturbance will uncope the heart.

Poppyblood, white noise, metal sweat, dry brain.

A black oil from boiling the feet of cattle.

My limbs are bound with malevolent sleep.

A pink baby curled up inside each poppy.

 

              This is a higher order of Empsonian ambiguity, the sort of thing emerging poets take great delight in, and which established poets take pride in reining in.  Still, ‘Somniform’ is an impressive piece.  So also ‘Tryptych’ in which the three stages of execution by lethal injection are entwined with beach imagery in a successful extended metaphor:

 

2. Pancuronium bromide (100 mg)

 

Only the fated know when

there are minutes left.  Tied to a plank

at sea, rising over troughs of swell,

the land disappears with each drop.

 

            Slattery is strongest when he harnesses his exuberance to a narrative thread.  ‘The Archaeologist’ is a powerful evocation of childhood and its implications.  ‘Lithographone’ demonstrates his impressive capacity to winkle wondrous imagery out of simple, straightforward, colloquial Australian English.  So also ‘The Slake’:

 

Dad said his back was too stiff

 

to bring in the dead lambs, so we went down

and opened the carcasses for the foxes

to come in after dark and take their hubs.

 

               He’s at his weakest with nonsense verse like ‘Dancey Miscellaney’ …

 

The ladybug does the Boston waltz,

the lobster a high-kicking cancan.

 

             where the poem is not much more than a vehicle for amusing himself with interesting words like  “farandole”, “catsrap”, “sarabande”, and “volta.”

 

             Canyon finishes with ‘The Rural Piano Rescue Project’, a long eight-part piece which plays to all of Slattery’s considerable strengths:

 

1. Structure

 

They used the 1912 Esterman upright

to plug a gap in the cow-yard fence.  A yellow

jessamy vine covers its back that faces out

like a dirty gold tooth along the white boundary.

From the other side you can see someone’s kept

the keys glint-clean.  We imagine stock workers;

 

left to bunk under the stars, spilling drink on the keys

as they sing the cows to standing sleep.

 

              This is the sort of poem which can win a major competition, establish a strong reputation, and convince readers to buy the poet’s next book. 

 

            Andrew Slattery is an exceptionally talented new voice in Australian poetry.   He has the craft, the sophistication, and the energy to compete with the very best. Canyon is an impressive milestone, and a worthy contribution to the literature.  At this point in his career, a full-length collection is the anticipated next step.  May it come soon.

 

 

 

 

Roberta Lowing

Written by mascara on . Posted in Poetry.

Roberta Lowing recently graduated with a Master Of Letters from the University of Sydney. Her poetry has appeared in Meanjin, Blue Dog, and Overland journals. For the past four years she has run the monthly PoetryUnLimited Press Poetry Readings and Open Mic Competitions in Sydney. In 2007, she edited PULP’s Ilumina Journal.

 

 

 

North

 

The past is only just now reaching us
and the last perfect place of exile

is another gateway to the dead

 

Even when we smelled the blackened hands

of the officials abandoning the capsized tanker

we kept applauding those who cut arteries of rock

and severed the ocean’s silver-scaled veins

 

We lived at the heart of the crystal

surrounded by ice roses and frosted fossils

we thought we could merely open another door to another north

and the devil would rush by

 

When the shadows appeared out of that first bruise-coloured dusk

(bird-shaped, seal-shaped) we didn’t listen to the cracking

from the battles of past winters     we didn’t realize

our black pages would never be white again

 

As the graveyard pools washed up on shore

our cliffs were reduced to midnight silhouettes

tendrils of shotgun smoke froze above the slumped bodies

ropes hung rigid from wooden beams in the boat houses

 

In other places

the land is knocked down by noisy winds

or it murmurs in resignation

as it swells into blurriness after the winter storms

 

Places that die every winter

are revived by the returning sun

but in Cordova Alaska

there are no new beginnings

 

We must stand glistening like chandeliers

crystal knots of tears on our cheeks

as the snow

falls burning on our hands

 

 

 

The Country Behind Us

 

Strangers who drove through Badourie in 1938

must have thought the war already happened: 

the bomb to end all bombs had bitten into the flat plain

and hissed out a grey wind, red around the edges.

 

It must have been more than the sun that bleached

the splitting fences and the cattle ribs that hugged the fissures,

chiselled out the wooden blades of the windmill

so it frowned, gap-toothed, over

 

the crumbling wattle-and-daub houses, the absence

of children staring from doorways, dogs

rolling their tufted yellow bellies

into the cleft shadow of the rotting porch.

 

In bullock-breath weather,

the ice gripping the wooden teeth clicks

as it turns under a sky as thin and white

as chalk smeared by a falling hand,

 

the birds remain blurs on the horizon,

the ground leans away to the summoned faces.

The windmill grimaces as the days descend

with their hammers of sun.   

 

 

Neda

you lie on your back

 in your jeans and headscarf

on your new bed of blue asphalt and red lace

 

 

when I rock the developing tray

your arms flail through the wet yellow smoke

under the crimson globe

 

lapping water is the only sound in my darkroom

but your world reverberates

with beating garbage tin lids

 

defiant cries from rooftops  

the soft hiss as the air divides

for stones flung by desperate students

 

we are satellites apart – the chemical smell

that bites my nostrils comes from your world –

but as I place the tongs over your heart

 

it seems we are the ones running through smoke

chased by razor-wielding men

in black helmets on black unmarked motorbikes

 

my hands are still

but you keep moving

sending out your indissoluble ripples

 

 

Brook Emery reviews “Motherlode” and “Not A Muse”

Written by mascara on . Posted in Reviews/Essays.

 

Motherlode: Australian Women’s Poetry, 1986-2008

 

Jennifer Harrison & Kate Waterhouse (eds)

 

Puncher and Wattmann, 2009

ISBN9781921450167

www.puncherandwattmann.com/pwmotherlode.html

 

 
 

 

Not A Muse

Kate Rogers, Viki Holmes (eds)

Haven Books, Hong Kong 

ISBN 978-988-18094-1-4

http://www.havenbooksonline.com/books/catalogue/not-a-muse 

 

Reviewed by BROOK EMERY

 

 

 

 

               What are my credentials, or lack thereof, to review these two anthologies of women’s poetry?

 

            Despite an androgynous first name, I am a sliced-white-bread, baby-boomer male. Husband not wife. Father not mother. I am also instinctively uneasy with categorisations that assume difference based on gender. Boys Book, Chick Lit – leave me out. Men analytical, women emotional; men aggressive, women nurturing – stop it! Men’s movements re-discovering the bear or hunter in themselves, women learning to be assertive – how sad. Single sex schools – indefensible, an admission of failure. Once, after a reading, I was told by one poet that my ‘sensibility was very feminine’ and, almost immediately afterwards, by another poet that my ‘voice was so masculine’. What to make of this? (That difference is in the ear of the beholder?) What to do? (Shrug and laugh?)

 

           But biology and evolution cannot be denied, and neither can social conditioning, nor entrenched beliefs and prejudices, and historically, politically and culturally it was, and, unfortunately, maybe still is, important that spaces are made for ‘women’s writing’, though something will have to be done about such a term because it implicitly defines itself not just against the non-existent term ‘men’s writing’ but against ‘writing’ .

 

          Perhaps it’s not so strange that I should have felt compelled to question my reviewing credentials as, in their own ways, the editors of each book exhibit a little nervousness about the reception of their projects and feel a need to position their anthologies within the history of feminism and so-called post-feminism. Harrison and Waterhouse write in their joint introduction to Motherlode:

 

We have been asked whether this is a feminist book and it undoubtedly is, if feminism is defined as that which women know and strive to make known.

 

         They acknowledge that much has changed in the lives of women as a result of feminism but identify the enduring experiences as:

 

the realities of fertility, pregnancy, birth and the bonds between mothers and their mothers, daughters and sons.

 

          The editors of Not A Muse: the inner lives of women are more political. Kate Rogers writes that the book explores,

 

how we define ourselves as women. Are we living our lives honestly, completely true to ourselves? If we choose an unconventional life, what are the costs? Not a Muse is, in part, about our choices. How we define ourselves as women and poets. How we define freedom.

 

          Viki Holmes asks rhetorically, ‘To what end an anthology of women only in this post-feminist era? Shouldn’t we be looking beyond divisions of gender in the 21st century?’ She doesn’t really answer these questions specifically other than to assert a right, or need, to speak and occupy the foreground:

 

Woman as mysterious, retreating Other; an enigmatic figure retreating in the distance, inspiring and intriguing – and silent. But what happens when the muse speaks? Not a Muse began as an attempt to redress this relegating of women to be sources of inspiration rather than creators. The voices in this anthology speak eloquently, reflectively, and with certainty, about the roles women have chosen for themselves – perhaps enigmatic, certainly inspiring and intriguing – but never in the distant background.

 

          In a preface, ‘On Reading Woman’, the Indonesian poet Laksmi Pamuntjak tackles possible objections to the anthology even more directly. She asks:

 

Aren’t the days of being jumpy at the very mention of the word ‘female’ or ‘feminine’ finally over, because women have advanced by leaps and bounds to assert themselves as a subject first and foremost, of which ‘woman’ is only part? … Hasn’t women’s liberation gone to such amazing lengths that many modern-day feminists now even believe that the very concept of woman is a fiction, thus raising the possibility that the concept of women’s oppression is finally obsolete and feminism’s raison d’etre has fallen away?

 

More pertinently: do we still need an anthology of women’s writing? Does it not seem an endorsement of the gender polarisation that women have fought so long and hard to batter down?

 

         Her answers to the last two questions are unequivocal: ‘yes’, then ‘no’. They rest. in part, on an undeniable political truth: ‘ in many parts of the world where women have no voice, no discourse, no place from which to speak, defining the ‘feminine’ is a luxury that cannot be corralled into the collective’.

 

          Really, neither book needs an apology or a theoretical feminist defence. The impregnable defence of both anthologies is just that they are artful, interesting explorations of human experience. Each one demonstrates the power of good poetry to engage people on emotional and conceptual levels not easily accessed by other means. How much more powerful, subtle and informing these poems are than shelves full of theory, therapy or self-help.

 

         Motherlode is a great title playing as it does on all the resonances of exploration, mining and discovery, of richness, abundance and centrality, while gently ghosting the homophone ‘load’ with its connotations of weight and burden. With 125 poets, 172 poems, and at over 300 pages it is abundant indeed. Published by the innovative and relatively new Sydney publishing house Puncher and Wattmann, it is also a beautifully produced book, attractive to look at and to hold. The cover is flexi-case which is closer to traditional hardcover than soft cover, there is a headband at the top and bottom of the spine, and even an attached bookmark ribbon. The binding is stitched, the paper gorgeous, and it is sharply printed and laid out: the packaging does justice to the content.

 

            The focus of Motherlode is clearly defined and circumscribed. It is dedicated to ‘our mothers’ and is not designed to include all shades of female experience but to explore the experience of motherhood and to make this accessible to the general reader. The anthology is divided into twelve sections: nature, icons, pregnancy, birth, infancy, sons and daughters, daily grind, loss, old wives tales, mothers and grandmothers, the world, this last retreat. 

 

            The editors suggest that the anthology be considered as a collective narrative and they invite us to read it sequentially as one would a novel. This can work, as poem after poem seems to be a conversation with and a departure from the one preceding it. To read it thus is, perhaps, to impose a narrative consistency and might lead to the temptation to construct archetypes corresponding to the section headings. Thus, to take for example the section heading ‘Birth’, the reader might move from ‘I am waiting / for what emerges / from the white edges / of catastrophe’ (Alison Croggon), to ‘Prostaglandin spreads like cold honey / my cervix ripening, as an avocado in brown paper’ (Kathryn Lomer) to ‘The next pain / takes your spine apart. / Pelvis gags / some kind of thing with horns / in its throat’ (Rebecca Edwards), to ‘Out from you as if in a continuum / is she still yourself? Finally she is not / She separates calmly, not crying’ (Phyllis Perlstone), to ‘This is the first thing I want you to know. I am your mother and you arrived in me and from me. You arrived not “child as other” but as the child of my centre, the child of grass and orchards, of mulberries in summer’ (Jennifer Harrison) to ‘Early this morning, when workmen were switching on lights / in chilly kitchens, packing their lunch boxes / into their Gladstone bags, starting their utes in the cold / and driving down quiet streets under misty lamps, / my daughter bore a son’ (Margaret Scott), to ‘At Bindawalla, the hospital / where only Aboriginal babies were born, / the nurses laughed as they put me in a shoe-box / and gave me to my mother; she cried’ (Elizabeth Hodgson), and finally to Rosemary Dobson: ‘Eight times it flowered in the dark, / Eight times my hand reached out to break / That icy wreath to bear away / Its pointed flowers beneath my heart. / Sharp are the pains and long the way / Down, down into the depths of night / Where one goes for another’s sake’. 

 

           There is nothing wrong with this way of reading unless the reader imposes unwarranted  generalisations rather than paying attention to the particularities of individual poems; to the way in which the same subject and similar experiences provoke such different responses and voices. Perhaps, though, just as profitably one can dip in and out of this collection reading each poem as poem and not worrying about its place in any sequence, jumping from, say, Jan Owen’s ‘We have no tender name / for you, small being, / drawn awry by some sad chance / as though you thought to play / too early with earth’s creatures, / fish, fowl, seal’ to J S Harry’s ‘I am mrs mothers’ day / I will hire myself out to you / for the 364 other days / I will not be satisfied by / 1 plus 364 / grottybunches of whitechrysanthemum / you choose to offer me snottynose’. Either way the reader will find lively poems which refuse to be shaped to fit any theory – one of the strengths of this anthology is that the editors, while elegantly shaping the collection, have not sought to impose boundaries.  

 

          Motherlode’s timeframe is restricted. The book concentrates on poems published between 1986 and 2008 and aims to be as representative as possible of the range of poets writing in that period. 1986 is chosen as the starting date because that was when the groundbreaking  Penguin Book of Australian Women Poets was published and, although comparison is not intended, inevitably and valuably, Motherlode will allow readers to consider what changes and continuities they can detect over this period. Motherlode publishes a number of poets (Judith Wright, Gwen Harwood, Faye Zwicky, Judith Rodriguez, Margaret Scott, Oodgeroo Noonuccal, Bobbi Sykes and Rosemary Dobson among them), and a few poems, which appeared in the earlier anthology but it also gives space to newer and younger poets including Rebecca Edwards, Morgan Yasbincek, L K Holt, Petra White, Elizabeth Campbell, Jane Gibian, Esther Ottaway, Lisa Gorton, Judith Bishop and Francesca Haig. The editors say that, to make their selection, they read over 500 books of poetry (plus print and on-line journals).  One of the excitements of this generous and generous-spirited anthology is to discover the number of Australian women poets writing now and the strength of their writing – from my own reading I’d hazard a guess that among the emerging generation of poets it is the women who are the most numerous and impressive. Opening the anthology with Gwen Harwood’s ‘Mother Who Gave Me Life’ and closing it with Judith Wright’s ‘Woman to Child’ provide powerful vantage points from which to view the achievement and consider the evolution of the tradition.  

 

            If Motherlode is a big book, Not A Muse, at over 500 pages, is huge. It features 114 poets from 24 countries. Ten of the poets (Pam Brown, Michelle Cahill, Suzanne Gervay, Margaret Grace, Tanya Hart, Jayne Fenton Keane, Laura Jean McKay, Kate Middleton, Leanne Murphy, Katrin Talbot) are Australian and, of these, only two, Pam Brown and Michelle Cahill, appear in Motherlode, and six were previously unknown to me. Perhaps the lack of crossover can be explained by the selection process – as I understand it the poets in Not A Muse were chosen by submission rather than by reading the available literature though, perhaps, some of the more well-known poets (Margaret Atwood, Sharon Olds, Erica Jong, Lorna Crozier, Laksmi Pamuntjak,) may have been invited to submit. This selection by submission does mean the quality of the poetry is a uneven and representation might be a little unbalanced but I don’t want that to sound like a serious criticism as I found much within these pages to enjoy and much that was new to me. The many countries represented allow for speculation about what might be thought universal and what culturally or personally specific.

 

          Not A Muse is dedicated to ‘our mothers and sisters’. Its intent can be guessed by the politically and emotionally charged ‘sisters’ and it’s conceptual scope gauged by the sections into which it is divided. Each is conceived as an aspect of female identity, so each heading, bar the last, is preceded by the words ‘Woman as’: creator, family, archetype, explorer, myth maker, home maker, landscape, lover, freedom fighter, keeper of secrets, keeper of memories, ageing. It is tempting to read Not A Muse, more so than Motherlode, as a single, multi-voiced argument, as chapters in a developing thesis. The title is a rejection or a negative definition, specifically of Robert Graves’s conception of woman as poetic muse. The collection overtly celebrates woman as subject and agent, active, outspoken, central to the creation of her own life and the life of others. Here the section headings really do read like archetypes and could be said to be imposing limits on the conception ‘woman’. Can you imagine a collection with headings like: homemaker, housekeeper, spouse, companion or, indeed, muse?

 

            This last question is not intended seriously. Poems on my imagined subjects do appear in the anthology and, indeed, ‘home maker’ is one of the headings. Individual poems in this anthology escape the confines of any characterisation even when they are at their most political and assertive and as I was reading I kept mentally thinking this poem could equally appear under this heading or that one. Try fitting the following excerpts under their assigned headings (answers appear, in order, at the end of the review):

 

Inside me, an Eastern European poet

is trying to get out. He’s killing me,

and I, with my recurring ear infections

and job, am slowly stifling him.

(Joan Hewitt)

 

I’m not getting up

when you call

I don’t want to

do your bidding

 

I’ll just lie here

chase some flies

with my eyes

 

You can be

forgiving

(Kavita Jindal)

 

Like a river feeding itself to the ocean,

Child, I continue to give myself to you

Until I become undone – scattered pockets

Of primitive earth, peeled bare.

(Tammy Ho Lai-Ming)

 

Because, like a poem, the city doesn’t know where our feet will

take us, we walked, unseeing, inaudible, heart-shaped. Too

many signs to follow. But there was a delight in being lost,

and rivering along took care of that until our voices

grew shrill and words

hung

        in the air

(Laksmi Pamuntjak)

 

imagine your mother

down on her knees

and sucking cock

and understand you will never really know her

(Nicole Homer)

 

I have not swept the floor – the Amy of Now

must pass that task to the Amy of Tomorrow

along with folding the clothes

and taking the garbage out. Tomorrow’s Amy

may not mind, she might open the day

eager to eat chores with a fork

(Amy Maclennan)

 

The black of Radha’s hair is cow dung

and soot

Her arms of yellow

tumeric, pollen or perhaps

lime and the milk

of banyan leaves

   (Nitoo Das)

 

One day she will put her hands out, fingers long

like yours

and she will

hold you

play you

 

and she will find the words that will turn you

into a cunt

(Sridala Swami)

 

A funnel has been shoved into my mouth

through which I am force-fed the sky.

I have eaten thunderheads, slaughtered angels.

And now they are mashing up the stars

into baby gruel.

‘You can eat anything,’ the doctors say

(Pascale Petit)

 

a Kurdish woman sang me a lullaby,

she said bab meant gate,

she said I know no poems

but I can sing to my dead child,

will you listen? And I think,

the whole world is listening,

you just don’t know it.

(Kirsten Rian)

 

I open my hand, see wrinkles, cold marks

of God’s anger upon my flesh. In these veins

runs depleted blood, returning capillary

by capillary from the centre of this rot.

Once, when I was a girl, I stood at the edge

of the sea and was tumbled over

by a rogue wave. What would it have been like

to glide on the undertow past kelp gardens

and coral reefs …

(Carol Dorf)

 

Who wants to hear about

two old farts getting it on

in the back seat of a buick,

in the garden shed among vermiculite,

in the kitchen where we should be drinking

ovaltine and saying no?

(Lorna Crozier)

 

 

     

           The differences between women (writers) are as great as the similarities. The similarities between men and women (writers) are as great as the differences. The particular disproves any generalisation but generalisations persist. The strength of both these books, on social, political and artistic levels, is that they give voice to similarities and differences, to the particularity and generality of female experiences. These are poems by women from women’s perspectives about women’s experiences but they are not just for women. It would be a terrible failure of  sensibility if a male reader were unable to imaginatively and enjoyably live within the poems in these two valuable collections. Both books belong in all public and educational libraries and would certainly augment a private collection.

 

(Answers: Creator, Family, Archetype, Explorer, Myth Maker, Home Maker, Landscape, Lover, Freedom Fighter, Keeper of Secrets, Keeper of Memories, Ageing.)

 

Stephen Atkinson reviews “Borobudur” by Jennifer Mackenzie

Written by mascara on . Posted in Reviews/Essays.

Borobudur

by Jennifer Mackenzie

Transit Lounge

ISBN 978-0-9804616-6-4

Reviewed by STEPHEN ATKINSON     

 

Journeys, actual and metaphorical, geographical and spiritual, and the cultural exchanges they facilitate, are at the heart of Australian poet Jennifer Mackenzie’s epic Borobudur, in which the pilgrimages of Borobudur’s priest-architect Gunavarman are a reflection of the writer’s own travels through the region and the writing process. For Mackenzie, wandering and poetry are in many regards the one thing, both conducted along similar trajectories and according to the same states of mind. Of the creative process of writing Borobudur she has said that, ‘texts, my own travels and experiences pointed in a certain direction and I followed’. Along the way she came upon the poets of the Javanese epics, and Kukai, the peripatetic Japanese monk in whose poetry, to her delight, Mackenzie found echoes of the voice she had worked hard to establish for Gunavarman.

 

            Soon, we are in lockstep with the poet and her guides, feeling the path beneath the soles of their ‘iris-dyed sandals’, embarking on voyages and alighting in sometimes unplanned destinations, hoisted on palanquins, and treated to the hospitality of princes, sages and scribes. The mandala-like structure of the 8th century Buddhist sanctuary of Borobudur was itself designed to be walked, successive clock-wise circumambulations allowing novices to ascend to progressively higher levels on the path to enlightenment, and so the figure of the journey acquires another layer of meaning, welding the experience of space to the rhythm of steady footfall, and to meditation, movement and poetry.

 

            Thomas Stamford Raffles, who governed Java for the British over a brief period from 1811 to 1815, is said to have been sitting in his stately residence in Semarang on the Java Sea when he first heard stories of an immense ancient wonder that lay part buried near the plain of Kedu in Central Java. Borobudur, though the subject of lontar texts and folk tales, and clearly known to people living in the immediate vicinity, was nevertheless shrouded in a mystery maintained by a curse: for members of the Javanese nobility, to visit the site meant certain death. It is said that a young prince, who determined to see for himself the ‘warriors in cages’, vomited blood and died shortly after his return.

 

            Raffles was a product of the English enlightenment, a linguist and scholar fascinated by the cultures, history and antiquities of the places he was assigned to govern. After hearing these fantastical descriptions, he summonsed the Dutch superintendent of historical monuments, Hermann Cornelius, who gathered a team to begin the task of locating Borobudur and disentangling it from centuries of obscurity. After months of steady labour, the extent of the structure and the technical and artistic virtuosity of its creators were revealed. This was almost fifty years before Angkor Wat was hacked from the jungle by a team led by Henri Mouhot, and so constituted Europeans’ first glimpse of the elaborate splendour of the Southeast Asian civilisations that predated their own. Such discoveries could have unsettled some of the presuppositions of superiority that increasingly came to underpin the whole colonial project, but the relatively new field of archaeology, and other disciplines like ethnology that busied themselves with the collection of artefacts, data and knowledge, at the same time constituted another form of conquest.

 

            Mackenzie’s project in some ways runs counter to the task of archaeology because it is more concerned with the limits of knowledge, the restitution of mystery and a return of some of the dust so assiduously swept away. If archaeology undoes the work of time, Borobudur reaffirms it. Central to all investigations into the past, though often unacknowledged, is the matter of mortality. And if Borobudur has something to teach us, it could be that we are all, like everything else, subject to the same processes of transformation, and that the change inherent in movement and time has somehow to be embraced. While staying with a family of dancers in the Indian Buddhist centre of Nalanda, Gunavarman learns ‘that stone and dance could be equivalent’, and

 

that in the weathering of stone

I anticipated my own weathering

in the elegance of the gesture

I could traverse that weathering like a god (65)

 

            While Raffles’ caretaker administration was short-lived, the West’s fascination with Borobudur and structures like it continued, scented with a romance and taste for the exotic not satisfied perhaps by the more austere relics of Europe. The nature of this continuing fascination, Mackenzie’s included, is interesting to ponder. In part it seems to be a case of sunlight and climate, a brightness and clarity that shimmers, sensual and fragrant, and Mackenzie’s verse is full of allusions to colours and light that fill the eyes to aching. Take for example, the sibilant whisper and crystal stillness of:

 

the lake’s transparent water

luxuriant with lotuses

the blue mountain’s snow-capped

summit moves easily

on its surface (p.62)

 

            Here, what is more, is a striking image of a time before time, before the white noise of the present, and core to the affect of Borobudur is its concern with time’s passing, with the difficulty of grappling with either eternity or mortality, and with the poignancy of grand endeavours to achieve posterity that tumble into pointlessness, leaving, at best, an enigma, whose meanings are spent and purposes lost just at the moment of their realisation.

 

            Borobudur gathers together lifetimes lived more slowly and with more conviction, to when journeys embarked upon in the pursuit of wisdom and higher learning could easily stretch to decades. A feature of Borobudur’s strength as a work of poetic cross-cultural interpretation is that it progresses through an engagement with, and imagined dialogue between, the lives, travels and works of the old Javanese poets whose witness offers another glimpse into Borobudur’s historic and cultural significance. In addition to her debt to poets such as Monaguna and Kertayasha, Mackenzie draws inspiration and insights from Prapanca, a documenter of the Majapahit Empire, whose fourteenth-century Negarakertagama makes reference to a Borobudur already long abandoned. That these writers were not all contemporaneous allows Mackenzie to eschew the tyranny of chronology to explore what we mean by timelessness, that is, what we mean when we describe a monument like Borobudur as timeless.

 

            Borobudur can be read as a companion piece to more conventional guidebooks and histories: one that sets out to complicate as the other explicates, to obscure as the other reveals, to propose dimensions less measurable, to replicate Borobudur as it condensed in the mind of its architect, to explore the conditions of its conception, and to remind us that stone is as ephemeral as the people who shift, shape, and attribute meanings to it. Mackenzie renders it all lyrically as clearly as Gunavarman choreographed his epic dance of stone. It presents a Borobudur that visitors today might not immediately recognise as they pay their admission and run the gauntlet of souvenir vendors, but which lingers in the atmosphere, in the evidence of the chisel, in the favourable aspect of the site, and in the spectacular views and blossoming trees that led in part to its selection.

 

            While the poems in the remaining section of this slim, beautifully designed volume, ‘Angkor and other poems’ arrive via different routes, they are similarly the product of Mackenzie’s personal engagement and fascination with the region and they also explore the relationship between wandering and poetry, people and nature, the material and the ethereal, time and disappearance. The haunted final poem of the collection, ‘The Botanist Lost at Lake Maninjau’, suggests the existence of portals to realms outside of time, asynchronous and invisible. For Mackenzie, to be lost in the jungle is to cease to exist or to have entered a world of disappearances. It ends:

 

he entered this light-filled canopy

walked ten minutes

broad leaves coalesced, undergrowth clotted

the air streamed with the inky curlicues of vines

the matte white of a sketch pad appeared iridescent

 

he turned around. the exit had disappeared.

 

 

 

Alan Gould: from “The Poets’ Stairwell”

Written by mascara on . Posted in Fiction.

 Alan Gould is an Australian poet, novelist and essayist.  His seventh novel, The Lakewoman,  was launched at The 2009 Melbourne Writers’ Festival, and his twelfth volume of poetry, Folk Tunes, has just been published by Salt.  Among his many awards, he has won the NSW Premier’s Prize For Poetry (1981),  The National Book Council Banjo Prize for Fiction (1992), The Philip Hodgins Memorial Medal For Literature, and The Grace Leven Award for his The Past Completes Me – Selected Poems 1973-2003.

 

 

 

The Mudda

 

Poets are born, they say, not made.

 

            By the time of my own birth I was an over-cooked baby, having dallied in the interior of The Mudda for week after overcast week beyond the normal term.  After such dalliance, little wonder my hankering to recover enchanted time.

 

            So I, Claude Boon, begin by imagining The Mudda in that interval of my pre-birth. As my embryonic presence swelled her usually neat, Flemish frame it grew ungainly as a washtub, and needed to be hauled, ah, upstairs, uphill, upfront and upsadaisy, onto double-decker buses and into small black cars, and she, Boon-buoyant, Boon-weary, with the burden of me. Did she complain? I believe not. If she sat at table, I was a round under her grey smock like a great cheese remembered from the plenty of pre-war Holland. If she returned from wet Woolwich High Street where she had stood half an hour in the queue for a ration of sausages or liver, she felt my presence as a grapnel on her every fibre. Her patience, her resilience, were entering my character, as were some of the qualities of her Brabanter forbears, my clean complexion and open forehead, my good-natured nose and my eyes a little too trusting of the world, perhaps.

 

            And if I pushed out my fist or my foot, how do I evoke the strangeness of her sensations? Here, did she sense it, was a live butterfly fluttering against the interior of a balloon, here was the gear-stick of a small black car pushed back and forth against her inner fabric?

 

   ‘Nou, we zullen zien wat er gaat gebeuren,’ she said, first in her own language to mask her impatience, then, to show politeness to the borough maternity nurse, ‘We must see what comes, of course.’

 

            If the Mudda’s patience was sometimes tested, I appeared at ease with the situation. Through those weeks of the British winter and early spring I hunched in the placental tree-house, stem-fed by her magnificent system. Into my future flowed those exact proteins and vitamins she could extract from the spam, the herring, the dried egg of that tin-food era, the orange juice, rose hip syrup and extra allowance of milk allowed for this pregnancy by her green ration card. While the Pa beavered among his memos at the British War Office, I spent the day, either rocked asleep by the Mudda’s internal rhythms, or dreamily pushing that exploratory gear-stick against her womb wall.

 

            Do embryos dream? Did my own lifelong attachment to reverie begin in the treehouse with some aural/maternal-fantasy? Is this where the protozoa of poems originate, for the muse is said to be a mother-figure.

 

                 Beglub-beglub pumped the Mudda’s heart, gloink, her intestinal plumbing eased itself, purrr, slid her blood along its Flemish conduits. Is it possible my proto-intellect was actually wired to the maternal dreaming during her final weeks of pregnancy in the Woolwich army quarter? From some trace-memory I possess, here is Mrs Boon dozing during the February afternoons, tiaras of raindrops agleam under the telegraph wires, while the scenes behind her eyelids show the imminent Boon, a spiked coronet on my round head that must surely tear her as I leave her. Then, in this phantasmagoria of a woman-with-child in a monarchic nation not her own, she watches as I grow away from her wounded body, recede to some altitude above her head like a gargoyle leering from the façade of one of those decorous, overbearing English cathedrals that her Englishman husband had shown her during his intervals of wartime leave.

 

            Week to week, cell on cell, morula, blastocyst, trophoblast, from fertilised ovum to gargoyle I grew. Ears, limbs, testicles popped from me like mushrooms. Blood went beading along my arteries and capillaries; insulin was secreted; teeth aligned themselves below the gums in preparation for their future troublemaking. I gained the full human kit with the apparent exception of the will to move on from that original tree-house welfare state. So complacent was my attitude to being born, it was decided three weeks after my term I would need medical help to be induced into the world. Poeta nascitur, non fit.

 

 

 

 While The Pa Read Milton

 

In fact I was not my parents’ first child, for there had been an elder sister, born at Dehra Dun in India in ’47 who survived only a few days.  To safeguard my own emergence into the world therefore, it seems the Pa had arranged, at some expense, for Harley Street’s Sir John Cue to be at Mrs Boon’s side. Five months earlier, this obstetrician knight had assisted at the birth of the heir to the British throne, an attendance thought to give me an improved chance of safe arrival.

 

            This may also account for the Mudda’s fantasy of my coronet, and in the longer term my sense of self-regard, this egotism materialising, as it were, at HRH favour.

 

            My birth occurred at supper time on a March Friday in 1949 at one of the delivery rooms of the King’s College Hospital.

 ‘Hah, hah, hah,’ gasped the Mudda, who was a modest woman trying to recover her composure after a bodily event rather more public than she preferred. ‘Ferry kint, dank u wel.’

 

                London’s Bow Bells did not ring for me, but outside the hospital window I gather the Thames sky did ooze a typical drizzle for this future minor Australian poet of the latter twentieth century. The 1949 streets were slimed with moisture as London families (like the Lucks of Third Avenue, Ilford) sat down to meals eked from whatever those green ration cards permitted; the spam, the rabbit pie, the dried egg scrambled to the insipid yellow of institutional soap, parsnip and cabbage boiled to a quattrocento artist’s corpse-pallor, or some originally orange winter vegetable similarly transmogrified.

 

            On this, my opening night, the Pa sat halfway down the long corridor leading to the delivery room. He was, we must guess, without his supper. A well-thumbed, leather-bound volume was balanced on his knee and he looked up from his page only when he heard an ‘Ahem,’ and found the KBE with his case of medical instruments standing uncertainly before him. Having come directly from his desk at The War Office, my parent was still dressed in his service uniform, the tunic buttons glinting under the neon lights. Promptly he rose to attention in order to hear the obstetrician apprise him of the facts of my birth.

   ‘Colonel Boon,’ Sir John apparently chose his words, ‘You have become the parent of a somewhat serious-minded young fellow, if the first five minutes of a life are any guide.’

   ‘I am obliged to you,’ replied The Pa.

   ‘May I ask what you are reading?’ asked the knight.

   ‘I am reading the incomparable Milton.’

 

             Keeping his finger in the page, the planet’s newest father held up the gold lettering on the spine of the book that it might be seen. The volume had accompanied the Pa during his war service with 43rd Division from Normandy to Bremerhaven so the tooled red leather of the cover was scarred by items, military and otherwise, that had chafed against it in one haversack or another during those eleven months of attritional European warfare.

   ‘I understand,’ replied the knight. ‘One is mindful at such moments as this of the need to touch the sublime.’

   ‘My feeling exactly,’ said the Pa.

   ‘Your wife is a foreigner, I see.’

   ‘Mrs Boon is Dutch, from Breda in the Northern Brabant.’ 

   ‘Just so,’ replied Sir John, (who perhaps felt he must disarm the Colonel’s tendency to over-explain when rank was an uncertainty in conversation). ‘Of course your son will be entitled to call himself a Cockney if he wishes. Earshot of the bells and so on.’

   ‘He will undoubtedly turn himself into something.’

   ‘Do you have in mind a name for the child?’

   ‘We have agreed on Claude Evelyn Boon.’

   ‘Claude from Claudius, just so. You have chosen stateliness there, I think.’ The knight rocked contemplatively back and forth on the balls of his feet. ‘And Evelyn!’ Sir John considered these syllables next.   

   ‘As an obstetrician, you see, one takes an interest in names. Evelyn, Aveline, your choice here derives from the French word for the hazel which was a nut denoting wisdom in olden days, did you know?’

   ‘I did not. I am obliged to you for informing me.’

   ‘May I wish the very best to the three of you?’

   ‘You may indeed.’

At this the knight apparently took a step or two, then paused in his departure.

 

            Let me pause to consider him. This person’s hands were the first to touch my own person. For some moments he would have cradled me, perhaps cleaned me, weighed me, and many years later, when I was intrigued by the remotest and smallest influences present in the formation of character, I was led to wonder what quiet influence those hands might have conferred upon me.

 

            This was not altogether self-regarding whimsy on my part. Twenty-eight years later, in an encounter that was extraordinary for its casual coincidence, Boon, the babe now grown to youngish manhood, would meet and receive kindness at the hands of his obstetrician. That meeting must await its place in this story, but it would allow me to know that Sir John possessed a pleasant face, more that of a pastrymaker than a knight perhaps, and the upshot of this is that I am pleased by the thought of having come into the world where my first contact was a kindly stranger. The spring of natural charity in people has mystified me, and I will meet a diversity of kindly strangers in the travels that these pages record.

 

            Now the knight, whose head would tremble a little as he struggled to express a perplexity, was confiding to the Pa. ‘And yet, you see, Colonel, if one only knew what that ‘best’ might include in these distracting times, Iron Curtains, atomic bombs and such palaver.’

 

            The Pa, I should mention, was a staunch Cromwellian in outlook and therefore in the habit of providing answers that were to the purpose. Here before him was a figure of social rank who had mislaid that vital self-assurance proper to rank, particularly when it was needed to sustain morale in nuclear times. 

   ‘One strives,’ the Pa delivered his view, ‘to give each child opportunity to discover such interests as may match a livelihood and that this match should please a commonwealth.’

 

            Did this grandiloquence belong more to the floor of The House Of Commons than a chat in a hospital corridor? My Pa was perhaps more parliamentary than colloquial in his relations with both me, and all his acquaintance. His work in military education, and his papers on disadvantaged learners lay behind this conviction.

   ‘Just so,’ Sir John shifted on his feet.

 

            And now there was an awkward pause, as of two men who might strike up an acquaintance could they fathom each other’s tone.  Then they shook hands and Sir John receded down the corridor while the new father stood under the icy lights wondering whether he might now put aside the incomparable Milton to visit Mrs Boon.  Along that corridor there may have been other delivery rooms producing other 1949 children, but no one intruded upon the colonel’s own small dilemma on that spot of linoleum.

 

            For my Pa was a gentlemanly colonel, divided between his knowledge that there were matters to face and his decent uncertainty as to whether it was proper for the paternal person to end the mother’s privacy quite so early after that mysteriously female event of a birth. Resolving against doubt, and slipping Milton into his briefcase, the Pa set out for the door to the delivery room.

 

(from The Poets’ Stairwell, a picaresque novel-in-progress.)

Peter J Dellolio

Written by mascara on . Posted in New Worlds.

Peter J. Dellolio has published critical essays on art and film, fiction, poetry, and drama. His poetry and fiction have appeared in various literary magazines, including Antenna, Aero-Sun Times, Bogus Review, and Pen-Dec Press. Through 1998, Peter was a contributing editor for NYArts Magazine. Currently he is working on a critical study of the films of Alfred Hitchcock.  He is a graduate of New York University, 1978, and holds a B.A. in cinema and literature.

 

 

Ineluctabilis

 

I will leave the building with her.  We will walk together for several blocks.  It will be night.  Before we leave, she will say something to me, she will make some remark about the tone of my voice.  When I speak to her, the tone of my voice will have a certain effect on her, and so she will make this comment.  As we leave the lobby of the building, I will notice that its beige marble walls have a faint glow.  This will be the effect of a street lamp shining through the glass doors of the entryway.

      I am not speaking to her at this moment.  I am going to speak to her.

      After turning my head to the right, I will lower my eyes and see the bicycle that she will be wheeling alongside her.  I will notice its two wheels.  She will have painted the black rubber blue, for aesthetic effect.  The black night will be filled with cool air.  The blue wheels will appear many shades darker than they are. This will be caused by the numerous shadows the night will have cast upon us.  The cool air will make me feel carefree and somber at the same time.  This association between atmosphere and emotion will be unconventional.  For the darkness of the night will give me a carefree feeling, and the coolness of the air will give me a somber feeling.  She will glance at me from time to time.  These glances will be unrelated to the movement of the bicycle she will be pushing alongside her, except of course for the contrast between the dark circular wheels and her bright round eyes, but I will not notice this contrast.

      She is not glancing at me at this moment.  She is going to glance at me.

      It will not be late, but the streets will be empty.  It will be quiet.  For the most part, the only sound to be heard will be the softly squeaking wheels of the bicycle.  I will have forgotten the sound of the door that will slam shut as we leave the lobby of the building.  However, she will remember this slamming sound, because while we are walking, she will glance at the dim, empty doorway of an abandoned building, making a remark about how unusually quiet it is. I will feel particularly lighthearted if I too look into this doorway.  The moment she turns to look towards it, a zephyr will lightly blow across my face, and thus I will suddenly be arrested by a desolate feeling.  A huge flag will be attached to a pole protruding from the window of a building across the street.  It will wave slowly and gently in the night air.  By the time I notice this flag, we will have passed the abandoned building with its caliginous entrance, but the flag will continue to wave in the breeze.

      It is not waving at this moment.  It is going to wave.

      When we reach the subway station, we will part.  I will enter the station and board a train.  She will begin to ride the bicycle home.  Before we part, we will stop for a few moments by the station entrance.  It will be located on the corner of a main avenue surrounded by traffic and pedestrians, and so the silence of the night will be gradually filled with the noisy sounds of traffic and talking people.  From below us, in the underground tunnel, a chaos of vibrations, created by the parallel trajectories of many speeding trains, will suddenly emerge, and at this moment I will glance at the two blue wheels of the bicycle.  She will be looking at me when I glance at the shadowy wheels.  Her head will be positioned at an angle that will allow the whites of her eyes to shine very brightly.  By this point, the air will be still, and the flag we will have passed will hang down limply, no longer waving.  I will not see the flag in this state of immobility, but I will be reminded of its waving when I lift my head from the wheels and look at her.  This reminder will be triggered by a cool gust of air, lightly blowing across my face just as I lift my head from the wheels in order to look at her.  At this moment, a passenger sitting in one of the passing trains will glance at a public service poster for the homeless, displaying a photograph of a derelict building, glowing in the moonlight.  When I lift my head and look at her, we will say goodnight.  As I turn away from her and start walking in the opposite direction, I will glimpse a gleaming yellow taxi speeding behind her head from left to right.  The streetlamp will no longer shine directly upon the marble walls inside the lobby; the glow of the taxi will diminish considerably as it falls under the shadow of a newsstand in a futile attempt to miss her.  This attempt will indeed fail as the cab strikes her fatally during the moment she closes her eyes while waiting for the traffic light to change.

      She is not closing her eyes at this moment.  She is going to close them.

 

 

     

 

Nija Dalal

Written by mascara on . Posted in New Worlds.

Nija Dalal was born in Atlanta, GA; she’s a second-generation Indian-American, currently living in Sydney, Australia. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree from Georgia State University, and she produces for Final Draft, a radio show all about books and writing on 2SERfm. Her work has been published in Dry Ink, an online magazine based in Atlanta, and in Ordinary, an online magazine from Sydney.

photograph by Dorothy O’Connor

 

 

A Midget Toe

 

A sign of inbreeding long ago that weaves through generations from a small Indian village, where people still die of live wires in water, to a city where the rich live in sparkle-ugly towers built on top of slums. This minute warp in genetic code weft its way through my mother’s DNA and winds with her across oceans and continents, over, under, over, under.  

I have named it “the midget toe.” The fourth toe on my right foot, it sits slightly higher than the others; it’s never quite fit in. It assumes a superior attitude, never touching ground unless forced, leaving the other toes to do the actual work of walking.  

Because of the midget toe, my right foot’s profile looks oddly truncated. A delicate heel, an elegant curve at the arch, a big toe, and the rest is misery. A downward sloping hill ends with a shock flat diving board. The other foot bears no match; no, the toes of my left foot follow the graceful gradient you might expect, if you ever expect things about toes. The midget toe means every open-toed shoe purchase is fraught with one very disconcerting question: does it create the illusion of symmetry? The sales girl is never paid well enough to respond kindly; closed-toed is my refuge. 

Like a grown woman wearing a padded bra, I hide my toe’s shortcoming and my shame with curved rigid structure. It feels wrong inside my shoe, self-consciously insufficient, while the left foot rolls easy and confident.  

I share the midget toe with my mother, my grandmother, my aunt, but not all the women in my family. Irregular, unpredictable, like a needle skipping stitches, the toe dances with some, slights others. If my lineage were woven in an ever-lengthening fabric, if the midget toes were marked, the tapestry would show a sort of hidden genealogy, a kind of coded secret, and it seems slightly magical, fairy lights twinkling in a family tree. I didn’t choose to have it; life might be easier without it. But the marvel of the midget toe lies in the knowledge that no matter how far I travel, if I unravel, a twisting thread keeps me tethered across oceans and continents to an immigrant home, a leafy Southern suburb, a sour-smelling sea-borne city, and a small Indian village, over, under, over, under.

 

Nandini Dhar

Written by mascara on . Posted in New Worlds.

Nandini Dhar’s poems have appeared or is forthcoming in Muse India, Kritya  and Sheher:Urban Poetry by Indian Women. Nandini grew up in Kolkata, India, finished her M.A. In Comparative Literature from University of Oregon, and is now a Ph.D. Candidate in Comparative Literature at University of Texas at Austin.

                          

 

 

inking the hyacinth

 

knowing how to make

                             the rosemary smell

                             like thyme is not enough.

                              

 

her  brother told her. with a touch on her forehead,

which, he thought, would reassure her. if she really

wants to be the kabiyali she thinks she is, she must

learn how to make pearls  from inside her spleen.

 

                           and that, he said,

                           requires perseverance.

                           amongst other things.

 

 

not yet ready to give up, she  spent days

sorting through spine splintering brick.

looking for the right kind of dust.

 

                     holding the specks

                     against the sun with

                     her three fingers.

 

the other two craving for shades of green

she had never hoped to touch. then, once

she had them all, she  swallowed the dust

drops. one by one. every one of them. not

noticing that her forehead now bears five

glowing blue spots.

 

                          exactly on the places where

                          her brother’s fingers touched her

                          cantaloupe skin.

 

probably because, she wasn’t feeling anything there.

almost in the same way the leprosy skin fails to notice

 

                            the prick

                            of a pin

                            on itself.

 

in the bread-colored desolation of a machete moon,

she  had to admit that her brother did not want her

to pull out her eyes one after the other and serve them

to him in crystal jars.

 

                        marinated in lemon juice, rock

                        salt and cinnamon flakes. neither

                        does he want her to spend the day

                   

sweeping speckless the ground under the guava tree

but, being just back from turning an oyster princess

into a porcelain-doll, he believes his assurances can

 

                      turn all silhouettes into full-blown

                      statuettes. she, on the other hand,

                      would rather scratch the oyster-shells

 

hard  and let the blood dry under her broken nails.

blood, when allowed to harbor chaos on its own, can

become a bladed verb which will pierce a bone right

in two. yet, eager to regale in his desperate certitude,

 

                       she gave up the bristles,

                       the blood,

                       bones and the blades.

 

for thirteen years, three months and three days, she made

the hyacinth leaf her bed. fed on air. and woke up every

morning to throw up spit the color of deep brown earth

and sunlit scar tissue. which she would then use to sculpt

rabbits, deer, sparrows and hedge-hogs.

 

                     and once she crawled back

                     into her hyacinth bed, her brother

                     would break them all. one by one

 

too ordinary, he would say, with an expert frown. the morning

she spat the pearl out, her brother held her head, picked up

the pearl stone, and after looking at it for two whole minutes

through purple tinted field glass, said, sissy dear, you are yet to learn

the art of madness wild. it was then that she smashed

 

                       the pearl on the rock. collected pieces

                       too pink. and  wrapped them up in

                       her rainbow-skinned scarf, walking off

 

towards her hyacinth-shield.  needless to say, no one

saw her ever again. Nothing much happened to her

brother either. only the white hyacinth flowers, in

the lake, turned fluorescent  violet. and on full-moon

nights, they bleed red. routinely. ritually. without fail.

 

 

 

irreconcilable:lines for virginia mem-sahib

 

My aunt, Mary Beton, I must tell you, died by a fall from her horse when she was riding out to take the air in Bombay. […] A solicitor’s letter fell into the post-box and when I opened it I found that she had left me five hundred pounds a year for ever.

 

                                                                                                     A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf

 

 

since 1835,

when abhinavagupta, shudrak, and rumi were forced to sit

tight-packed on a single shelf, leaving the rest of the world to alphabets

that jumped out of ships and judge-sahib’s wigs, textbooks have perfected

the art of making crazed scribbling-chicks look tame.

 

tame enough to be tapestried into buttercream muslin pillow cases

 

tame enough to be painted on jasmine-white schoolroom walls

 

tame enough to be talked about without once referring

to that conch-shaped nose of yours

the look in your eyes, which says,

i am perfectly capable of drenching myself

in the purple-blue of a drizzly-day sun, claiming, the sun

belongs to me and only to me, and can,therefore,

be swept away, into the abyss of my purse,

just like the peacock-feather of my hat.

 

 

my tongue was daffodil-bruised.

the little man made me peel oranges

for eight hours every day, my ass on wood,

the tip of his beard brushing off the last traces

of elizabeth, mary, all those poet-girls who walked straight

into the smoke-filled coffeehouses, corsets tightly folded into eight

in their armpits.

 

hell,i didn’t know that even sammy dear

had waved off the sugar-bowl with the back of his left hand while pouring

out a full dose of white guilt in the wings of albatross

 

so, i held on to your lonely sun. although,

for my own sake,i would have rather opened my lips,

tongue,limbs and nipples to the storm. yet, there are days,

when i craved for a share of your sun, with bleeding fingernails

and all.

 

you were running,

your skirt hitched up to your knees,

from the very old man

with scissors for clipping the wings of women

who build abodes other than the ones thrust upon them

by holy matrimony.

 

i was running right beside you,

trying to figure out the color of the thread of your hems.

i would have given anything for them to be the shade

of clotted blood, rust, deep-fried, well-breaded mutton cutlet.

 

and there was mary beton.

bombay.the horse. the fall.

five hundred pounds a year. a room ensured.

 

damn it, girl, i couldn’t care less

for your aunt beton or her fall. but I did care

for the five hundred pounds, which, had they

stayed behind, could have been used to build

my own room. Or, for that matter,

one for my sister

one for my cousin

one for my aunt

one for my mother

one each for my father, brother and uncle.

 

ginny dearest, i don’t trust you

with the carving of my wood.

for all practical purposes, you’re just

another mem-sahib.

 

nothing more.

 

Zuzanna Nitecka

Written by mascara on . Posted in New Worlds.

Born in Warsaw, Poland, Zuzanna Nitecka left her home country in June 2008 to seek inspiration under the palm trees of Spain. Her greatest inspiration is the magical world of Richard Brautigan’s imagination. She is currently living in Madrid, writing, wandering around at night and making friends with struggling musicians. And teaching English in her free time.

 

 

 

After

 

You get on the train at 6:45 giving off waves of afterlove frequency.

There is a glow under your skin as if you had dozens of very small Christmas candles in your belly. You stand out against the cold fluorescence of the metro. Eyes turn to follow you as you pass by in search of a seat. You sit down, oblivious: perhaps you pull out a book from you bag or sip tea from a green thermos. All the while. The car gradually fills up with your mind that is aglow.

 

 

Loss

 

There’s nothing more sadly sensual than after-rain pine trees stuck into earth like paper umbrellas dropped into a cocktail glass.

As I walk under dripping branches, thinking my thoughts, I see a black scarf on the concrete path before me. It belonged to a woman. She wears heels and perfect make up. Sweet perfume. She is afraid of growing old. The wind must have untangled the scarf from her shoulders. She walked all the way home from this little park with the ghost of the scarf wrapped around her neck. Before she realized it was gone.

 

 

Concert

 

The clanking of pots and pans drowns out the music (a sonata of practicality). She brings out the dinner: rice in asparagus sauce. As the music begins, she will fidget. Thinking about plates that should be washed; drinks to be served; stains on the tablecloth. Meanwhile, the musician plays

as if he was taking revenge on the world. To avenge some terrible grievance. Then. The trembling of strings announces it’s over. In the silence

that comes, a question: “Will you help me clean up?”

 

 

(…)

 

The demon of disturbed sleep

broods

in bright daylight

 

 

(…)

 

A hudred years ago, it was 7 am. Beds rocked softly

on cold floor like empty peanut shells.

 

Usha Kishore

Written by mascara on . Posted in New Worlds.

Born and brought up in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, Usha Kishore now lives on the Isle of Man, UK. Usha was educated at the University of Kerala (India), Sheffield Hallam University (UK) and Canterbury Christ Church University College (UK).   After having taught for some time in the British Secondary and Tertiary Sector, Usha now teaches English at a Secondary School on the Isle of Man . Usha’s poetry has been published in magazines and anthologies in the US, UK, Ireland, Europe, New Zealand, India and online. Some of her poems have been translated into German, Spanish and Gujurati. She also writes critical articles for international magazines.  Her poetry has won prizes in UK competitions and has been part of national and international projects. Her short story “Dowry” was shortlisted for a major UK literary award, the Asham Award (UK) in 2005.  Usha also translates from Sanskrit; her translations of Sankara have been published in India, the UK and USA.   She is now translating Kalidasa’s Ritusamhara, in conjunction with Dr.Rati Saxena of Shree Shankaracharya Sanskrit University, Kalady, Kerala.

 

 

 

 

For The Dynasty Of the Moon
(after reading Kylie Rose)

For the dynasty of the Moon,
A hundred thousand lives lost
in verse…

Metres of battle scanned into
Krishna’s eternal song –
A stoic sage chronicles the

end of his own dynasty –
a patient elephant God scribes
into eternity…

In the Vela kali of yesteryear’s
setting sun, I hear the battle cry of
the lone sun-warrior, who challenges

the house of the moon.
Panchavadya notes echo
into twilight memory –

The raga hindola, mourning the death
of the lone young warrior killed
by deceit. Arjuna takes a terrible

vow and Krishna smiles in the
bugles of Panchajanya, while a
lone monkey mediates on the flagstaff…

From the carvings on the temple wall,
she, with unravelled hair, calls out to my
soul from stone – screaming revenge for

the disrobing of womanhood….

 

Krishna’s eternal song – The Hindu “Gita”
Vela kali – Temple art (dance) form
Panchavadya – five instruments played together
Hindola – a raga in Carnatic music
Panchajanya – the conch of Krishna (The poem is based on the Hindu epic Mahabharatha)

 

Nikhat’s Mother

She stands out in a crowd –
Her shocking pink
dupatta carrying
songs from the Gilgit –

She is without
a language here –
I am her interpreter –
translating her
language, her culture
her colour–

She does not understand
why Nikhat has to attend
school daily – Nikhat is at
her sister-in law’s cousin’s
wedding in Bradford–
Today is Mehendi, tomorrow
is the Nikah  and Nikhat will
not be in school for a week –

She does not understand
why Nikhat is harassed
by school bobbies –
Bibi jaan, taleem lena,
dena hamara mamla hai –
Ye gore kyun dakl dete
hain?

Biting back half-an hour’s
exasperated laughter,
I interpret to the irate
Head of School:
Nikhat’s mother  does not
understand the concept
of compulsory education…

 

Mehendi – The henna festival before marriage     
dupatta – veil/scarf    
Nikah –  Muslim Wedding ceremony                                        
The Urdu dialogue can be translated as:  Madam, education is our personal business, why are the whites interfering?                              
Gilgit – a city in Northern Pakistan and is the gateway to the Karakoram ranges of the Himalayas.

 

 

 

Franz Wright

Written by mascara on . Posted in Poetry.

 

Franz Wright, the son of poet James Wright, was born in Vienna in 1953. During his youth, his family moved to the Northwest United States, the Midwest, and northern California. Wright’s most recent collections of poetry include Wheeling Motel, where the poem "Night Flight Turbulence" appears. Past collections include Earlier Poems, God’s Silence and The Before Life. Walking to Martha’s Vineyard (Alfred A. Knopf, 2003) received a Pulitzer Prize. Wright has translated poems by René Char, Erica Pedretti, and Rainer Maria Rilke. He received the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry, as well as grants and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Whiting Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He lives in Waltham, Massachusetts.

Johanna Featherstone

Written by mascara on . Posted in Poetry.

Johanna Featherstone is a Sydney-based poet and founder and Artistic Director of The Red Room Company: www.redroomcompany.org.

 

 

 

After the Funeral

Family space vibrates with Grampa’s past effects;
to the left shoulder of an elegant desk, a square
gold frame holding the smile of his son,
dead at twelve year’s old. Toiletries, wallet things,
collected from the hospital, weigh down the single
bed that recently held his butterfly body.
On the dresser, pollen flakes from a posy of blue
cornflowers, pulled from their garden plot.
Dust particles through light, fuzz forms atop
rubbish bags, packed with his clothes, for the tip.

 

The Fernery

Ferns shroud the bench where I sit.
Each frond settles in its own moist corner,
a rivulet trickles beneath the simple teak bridge.

Moments grow. Then your shape enters the
miniature jungle. Our bodies cowled in vines;
plants and ants witness our licks, until tourists
with cameras snap open the yielding bodies –

and we run from the radiance, leaving behind
(for next time)
the filtered light and vanishing faces of mist.

 

 

Andrew Jackson

Written by mascara on . Posted in Poetry.

Andy Jackson lives in Melbourne, Australia, and writes poetry exploring the body, identity and marginality. He has been published in a wide variety of print and on-line journals; received grants from the Australia Council and Arts Victoria, and a mentorship from the Australian Society of Authors; and featured at events and festivals such as Australian Poetry Festival, Queensland Poetry Festival, Newcastle Young Writers Festival and Overload Poetry Festival. Most recently, he was awarded the Rosemary Dobson Prize for Poetry, and is currently a Café Poet in Residence for the Australian Poetry Centre. His most recent collection of poems, Among the Regulars, is scheduled for release by papertiger media later in 2009. 

 

Ghazal

Why do you smother your soul in that fist still?
This wound will open and heal itself – just sit still.

Sheer will’s not enough.  Floating past like dropped pollen –
all these tree-borne thoughts your intellect has missed, still.

The country doesn’t care for you, the earth craves your bones.
All your machines will only make you an atavist.  Still,

who are you but your tics and eruptions, your prosthetics
and open holes?  A flower is much more than its pistil.

Sand is not ground but a crowd.  The ocean knows this.
However bitter the wind, the shore must still be kissed.

Press your thumb into these bruises, your forehead
to the earth, and face the unbreakable tryst.  Still

water? A trick your mind plays, persuasive as a mother
tongue or god.  Beyond the city’s grid, thick mist still

waits in the deep valley for your water-logged body.
Dream of becoming bread, oh grain – you are grist, still.

Not the smoke or the wick or the shadow on the wall,
moth, but the flame, which cannot exist if still.

 

Something else

Since the door was locked, I’ve learnt so much.
A face can feel the sun yet forget what it’s for.

Bars obscure the world, shrink the room
to stand up, take a few steps.  Legs buckle

under the weight of a body with no soul.
At intervals I’m fed, given medication.  The walls

absorb the smell of those who arrived and left.
Only the press release escapes.

I have no desire to lash out.  The voices are calm
and impersonal – the risk to the public

still not low enough.  These wings
are withered and pecked to the bone

and see the future, like the sky, is an open
lie.  Everything is a weapon.

Refusing food, speechless, I speak
the only dialect left.  Outside are people

who say they wouldn’t treat an animal like this,
their faces averted like statues, ideal humans.

My life depends on us becoming something else.

 

Comfortable

My instinct’s to curse myself –
the shore is a wall of fire, my city sings
its people into fuel, the rotten pillars

of the jetty creak their warnings, while
this boat of bones tugs at its moorings.
Yet each rope I approach with the knife

has become a throat my heart can’t cut.
Instead, alone, at night I pace the hull
and scrutinise each knot – these twisted

lines, old stories which hold me here,
a half-brave face raised, my fear
the sea could be a mirage.

Shannon Burns: The Translator

Written by mascara on . Posted in Fiction.

 Shannon Burns is a writer who lives in Adelaide.

 

 

 

 

 

The Translator

I am, you should know, by trade, a translator, which is to say I know several languages, and I can turn one language into another, as it were, so I am no amateur to this, whatever it is, if there is a name for it, which I doubt, since I haven’t come across it, and I have come across a lot of names, in many languages, but not the name for this, to what we are doing, or what I am doing, or what the world is doing with us both, whether we like it or not – and whether or not we like it I cannot honestly say.
 
I can turn one language into another, yet you, it would seem, have no language at all, you can barely turn your thoughts into sounds and gestures. The best I get from you is your moaning and biting, and the way you wring your hands, if they are in fact hands, since they seem to me to be somewhat like hands but not completely functional.
 
In any event, you won’t let me look at them closely. Every time I get near enough to study them you move away. If you are in your corner you move to the other side of the room, or you growl, or you foil my attempts in some other way, by sitting on them, for instance, or by screaming so loudly it hurts my ears.
 
When you scream, I am the one who is forced to move to the other side of the room, which leads me to imagine, sometimes, as I am scurrying away, that I have in fact taken on your body as you scurry away from me, from my desire to see your hands, which are in some sense sacred to you, and untouchable, although you touch them yourself, but always as if to protect them from being touched by someone else, by something else, since you won’t touch anything with your hands, other than yourself, which leads me to wonder whether they are hands at all, since hands are surely for touching, and if they do not touch perhaps they cease to be hands, and if they are in some way misshapen perhaps they cease to be what they seem to be, or seem to attempt to be, although they make no practical effort, but just by looking somewhat like hands, by having fingers and thumbs, and having the general shape of a hand, but never being used as a hand, and therefore doing nothing more than seeming like one – which strikes me as an attempt to be a hand, because it is so close to being a hand, whether it desires to be a hand or not, that it appears to want to be a hand, as if the form itself is the truest gauge of intention, although I strongly doubt it, yet it seems that way nonetheless.
 
It is as if, in those moments when I scurry away from you, feeling myself to be you scurrying away from me, I finally understand what it is to have those hands, which are not hands. I wonder, at those moments, or to be more precise in the aftermath of those moments, whether you have undergone a similar experience, whether you have taken on my hands while I have yours, whether you have suddenly felt yourself to be inside my body, and whether, for the briefest moment, while I am wholly disoriented and therefore incapable of watching over you, you have been able to speak.
 
The question of your hands is something we cannot depart from, but we will, for now, at least to a certain extent, although they must always be hovering, those hands, over everything, since without them what else?
 
What else, other than this, since there must be more than this, because without that what is this?
 
At least they are better than my eyes, which are nearly blind.
 
But, there again, how can one compare eyes which do not work with hands that are not, strictly speaking, hands?
 
It appears foolish, but at the same time strikes me as acceptable, and that seems good enough, for now, for me to depart from all this talk of hands or whatever they are, although they may hover, and let them hover for all I care, for I have cast them away with my eyes, which do not work very well, but whose mention at least has this power, so let that be the end of that.
 
The real question is as follows:
 
If I am to be you, it seems to me that I am, as a result, in a sense, to embody you, but which you? You have not yet, in truth, been allowed to speak, despite my speaking for you, as you. In truth I speak despite you, as well as for you, and with you, and because of you. In truth you are my speaking, and yet you are dumb, utterly.
 
For the most part you shuffle from side to side, instead of speaking, which is to say you walk in a strange way, if one could go about calling such a thing, as your gait, a walk. It is more like a dance, but without rhythm, or flow, or balance, or anything resembling the joyful expression of bodily movement. Instead you gait. There is no other way of putting it.
 
I have considered purchasing footwear, within which you might steady yourself, or seeking podiatric or chiropodic stimulus, in the sense of diagnosis and treatment and healing, or of teaching you to walk differently, given your lack of balance, or disease.
 
I say these things, I confess, as one might whisper prayers in the face of an abyss, against which we are thrown, so to speak, with little more than our selves, our basic parts, our meager substance, to subsist on. But you are not an abyss, by any means, my dear, or at the very least not merely.
 
If you are, as they say, enigmatic, a thing to puzzle over, a wound, let’s say, an opening, let’s say, then you are not quite an abyss, but rather an opening into flesh, with its definite tissue, its intimate warmth, its assent by touch.
 
Because this is the crux of the matter: I have felt your assent.
 
That is to say, you have said yes to me, but it was a yes, a trust, consisting entirely in touch, in touching your body with my fingers, although it’s true to say you withdrew from me in that touching, but you allowed it nonetheless, even though you were not completely there, since you seemed to take refuge in some other place, some place demonstrably inside you and therefore, I might add, bodily.
 
You were not there, you said yes to me. This is what I am getting at.
 
Perhaps you will be able to enlighten me, later on, when you have taken up some form of speaking, when you have become, in a sense, speech itself, of the place into which you withdraw. Is it a place of the past? Or is it a still place – a sanctuary, let’s say, against time, in which things are wholly unfamiliar, as a landscape in a different world, given other predicates, attuned to different sensibilities, like, for instance, a gentler form of gravity, or a porous light.
 
Perhaps it is a place inside you, and if I am, in fact, to draw you away from it, in a sense, with this language, to give you tools for containing it, and constituting it, and re-constituting it, then it seems to me I am doing something bodily, something concrete, and acquiescence to such a thing can only be given as touch, as I have touched you, and discovered your withdrawal, at the same time as your assent, which is at the very least an assent to something, though it only be my presence there beside you, with my hand on your mouth, covering your lips, that you might speak.
 
Your lips said yes, without speaking. This is how I’ve interpreted it.
 
There is a risk involved, undoubtedly, but if you were only there, as you are now, as you read this, then you would understand my response to your lips, as you are now, as I write this.
 
You are asleep.
 
Something in the writing of this, while you are asleep, is a digression from the ordinary work I have taken up, of becoming your story, so you might be told it from my mouth, in return, and this digression speaks of something else, something I am not entirely comfortable with in this process.
 
It is this.
 
I was leaning over you, earlier, and in a sense conjuring something, something concrete, since the feeling had crept over me quite overwhelmingly the night before, and was being repeated at that moment, earlier today, that I was in need of your touch, and that your touch, your skin, might not be entirely relied upon, and there was something about this idea, which I couldn’t put out of my head, as I lay there in the dark, last night, which I could hardly endure, which threatened to tear away at something, something altogether necessary, the loss of which would leave me utterly disrupted, let’s say catatonic, completely destroyed, erased from existence.
 
Yet the next day, today, I touched you, and your flesh said yes, or if it wasn’t a complete assent it was at least a partial one, since your flesh said yes to me, yes, I am here, even as you withdrew.

 

Douglas Miles on WS Rendra

Written by mascara on . Posted in Reviews/Essays.

EVEN MUTTERS CAN MATTER: TEMPTING STUDENTS
WITH THE TASTE OF BAHASA INDONESIA

DOUGLAS MILES: An Essay On W.S. Rendra

 

 

 

 

W.S. Rendra who enjoyed several visits to Australia, died in Jakarta on the 6 August, 2009 at the age of 74.  I valued a joking relationship with the “Burong

Merak” (= peacock).  He delighted in this soubriquet and successfully nurtured his own media image as a youthful cosmopolitan and energetically flamboyant maverick despite the fact that like Javanese farmers, he always went barefooted and usually dressed entirely in their faded black cotton garments anywhere “off- stage” and as a rule when on it. Indonesian thespians who were younger than he assumed that he was my junior. They called him “mas” (= “gold” as well as “big brother”) but categorised me with the dross of “oom” (=“Dutch uncle”).  Even so, among Indonesian sponsors of my graduate students, it was he who proved to be the most venerably avuncular and persuasively represented the interests of these sometimes difficult expatriates during his occasional formal visits to the Academy of Sciences (LIPI) with a charmingly elegant (alus) but sartorially flawless (rapi) professionalism. Should I now share the secret that he persuaded me 30 years ago (when Suharto’s junta refused him an exit permit) to smuggle his way an urgent consignment of not-so-flamboyant-black hair-dye? Never!

My disconnection from the internet in recent months because of travel spared me the sad news of the death until his Teater Bengkel (Workshop Theatre) unexpectedly contacted me during mid-October with some of the distressing details.  And I certainly was not insensitive in retrospect to the poignancy of my efforts in Europe during the interim to have striven to emulate the characteristic vivacity of Rendra’s own readings of his poetry with my own incomparably ersatz declamations but of course with no mention of his recent passing to any of my audiences. An even greater regret has become my inability to tell him how his work has recently helped me to recruit Western students to the study of his language. But it would be more important to him that teachers who have that responsibility should receive that message in which any doubt they may have that this is so will cease once they have tested the tried and proven pedagogical procedure I exemplify below.

Even so it will be interesting to see whether any of the cognoscenti will gainsay my certainty that Rendra was the most brilliant of the few Indonesian poets and playwrights who managed to emerge from and survive the suffocation of literary creativity for three decades under Suharto’s New Order (late 1960s- mid 1990s). The Smiling General’s regime banned any printing or performance of The Struggle of the Naga Tribe which through the structure of classical Javanese/Balinese shadow puppetry, satirised the royal court in the pseudonymous Astinam (read Indonesia) and hilariously pilloried the Queen (read Mrs Tien -“Ten Percent”- Suharto) as well as her ministers for their vanity, venality and vene …(read the American itches which his dalang, played by Rendra’s wife had all these puppets forever scratching).

His security guard of military police arrested him rather than his assailant when targeted by a bomber while reciting the even more satirical Snapshots of Development in Poetry to the thousands of roisterously applauding aficionados who packed Ismael Mazuki’s roofless Garden Theatre (TIM).  His prosecutors had to invoke a special Emergency Law that he had “provoked the attacker to violence” so that it was the terrorist in mufti who walked free while the poet went to gaol … And not for his longest stint … But what gets under my skin even years later, for nine eternally vermin-infecting months.

The former love lyricist’s originality in eliding the idioms with the sophistries of several languagesultimately defied Wordsworth’s (1800) narrowly effete definition that “poetry is emotion recollected in tranquility (sic) and calls for recognition of the genius Rendra evinced through anything- but- tranquil articulation of authentic and indeed uniquely Indonesian cultural and political priorities in Western literary forms.  The poems he scripted as critiques of the New Order in his own handwriting for his lively readings from the stage became somewhat more than even the finest examples of that art by his most talented contemporaries (e.g. consider his protégé Emha, the theologically muscular Muslim bard).  It was indeed Rendra more than any other of these Indonesian scribblers who transformed the “ho-hum” convention ofCatholic schoolboy elocution at Dutch eisteddfods throughout the colonial Indies into modern Indonesia’s robustly intellectual and iconically political dramatic genre of deklamasi whose magnetism has packed the theatres of Asian capitals and of foreign universities whenever they have delivered to publics and whether domestically or overseas.

Top dissident musicians of the time who were no strangers to the limelights were glad to sit somewhere out there in the darkness before him at home in awe-stricken envy of his command over that ambience. They included glitterati of pop and folk such as Ebiet of country-and-western fame, Mogi Daroessman whom they called the “Neil Diamond of Indonesia” and Gombloh of Lemon Trees. The singers persuaded the declaimers to compose lyrics for them whenever possible as they imbibed the lesson that the thousands of typically illiterate but articulate Jakartans in the surrounding blackness would loudly relish a politically barbed stanza whenever Rendra fired it just as surely as these ghetto-dwellers would flinch at the sharp whiff of a real Betawi curry when a back-alley cook  stirred it : just a slight breath of salty blacan serrated the bite which hallmarked its own  perfection;  no need for these acolytes of Rendra to read some bit of paper like a recipe  to savour either; and no need for them to wear footwear to a  his recital if the price of cheapest thongs challenged their purchase of a ticket.

My tape-recordings vouch for Rendra’s remarkable propensity to draw volcanically creative spiritual energy from his largely barefooted audiences when he composed some of his most inflammatory verses. He would even create new stanzas spontaneously from behind the lectern amid his fire-and-brimstone barrages at the regime’s catechism of national commitment which prioritised ‘Development’ (Pembangunan) over ‘Freedom’ (Kemerdekaan); and the security of censorship over the public’s hunger to know (see below). During intervals in TIM’s dressing room he was genuinely inquisitive when he asked for someone to play back still-smoking lines he had just uttered but never yet read even to himself so that he could scribble them down notably for the first time and ask: “Did I say that or did you just make it up?”  (How I wished I had.)

The specific qualities which constitute Rendra’s artistic greatness also include the many ways with which he transcended cultural differences; for example, with the translingual pun which I understand is an anathema for literary purists.  The device helped him (deliberately?) to induce Western novices into an appreciation of Bahasa Indonesia and uncannily to speak that language sometimes before they even knew they were doing so.  As a mere taste of this magic, I invite the readers to reflect on at least their own whisper of a few lines which the paragraph after next will borrow from “Sajak Mata-mata”.  This “Ode to Spies” enlivens both Snapshots of Development in Poetry (Potret Pembangunan dalam Puisi, Balai Pusaka, 1978) and SOB (State of War and Siege, University of Queensland Press 1979).

Mourners at mortuary gatherings in Australia conventionally request one another to be upstanding and close their eyes to observe a collective silence in memory of the deceased.  I propose that we honour Rendra’s memory equally respectfully by the very opposite of silence and with pupils wide open on the world in rousing declamations of what he wrote even when those who are with us are not all Indonesian speakers. Teachers can do no better than follow his example in providing prospective students of Bahasa Indonesia with such tempting introductions as the following to the creative possibilities of lovingly moulding the clay of the language he mined as the basic material for his wordcrafting.

Consider for instance the duplication which is so well exemplified by a word whose root “mata” means “eye” and which in the internationally now familiar “Mata Hari “translates as “eye of the sky” (= “sun”).  As “mata2”, the root becomes an expression for “spy” or “spies”.  In recent months I have introduced my tributes for Rendra in Europe by drawing attention to that simple feature of Indonesian and then inviting my listeners to participate in an articulation of this poem by quietly voicing  the words “mutter, mutter” as a chorus to contextualize my own declamation from a faulty memory of the following  excerpts from “Sajak Mata2”.

I recalled that the opening stanza of his handwritten notes of which I had kept a few photocopies somewhere back in Australia, began with an allusion to Indonesian newspaper readers urinating provocative gossip on one another to substitute for the facts which the controlled press denied those in the political hierarchy’s lower echelons:

Ada suara gaduh di atas tanah. (aduh2)

Ada suara pi(s)sing kebawah tanah

Ada ucapan-ucapan kacau di antara rumah-rumah.

Ada tangis tak menentu di tengah sawah.

Dan, lho, ini di belakang saya

Ada tentara marah-marah.

 

 I encourage the continuation of the chant of “mutter, mutter” especially to accompany this fifth stanza about censorship and the expression of outrage that:

“……. Aku  tak tahu. Kamu tak tahu.

Tak ada yang tahu..Betapa kita akan tahu,

Kalau koran-koran ditekan sensor,

Dan mimbar-mimbar yang bebas telah dikontrol?

Koran-koran adalah penerusan mata kita.

Kini sudah diganti mata yang resmi.

Kita tidak lagi melihat kenyataan yang beragam.

Kita hanya diberi gambara model keadaan

yang sudah dijahit oleh penjahit resmi.

 

 

Mata rakyat sudah dicabut.”!!…oleh… ?

 

This italicized and highlighted initial line of the sixth stanza translates as

“The eyes of the people have been “ripped out ” (like teeth) …by … ?

And the chorus answers with “mutter, mutter “ which harmonises with the

declamation’s

“………………………………….mata2”

So be it if Auden mused that “Poetry doesn’t (sic) make things happen….”(MascaraEditorial, November, 2009) when decades later on the other side of the globe Rendra’s  talents with ball-point and microphone panicked even the most menacing of the New Order’s managers into seriously self-damaging, political miscalculation under the relentless barrage not only of Rendra’s drama but also of his declamations. Peerless artistic qualities proofed them against competitive cover-up of malpractice by the junta throughout the social system. Remarkably, the contribution of this Indonesian scribbler to the cultural heritage of the oppressed in his country has probably become the best evidence which pundits may ever need to marshal that poetry really does matter (c.f. Parini, 2008).

Even if only a few critics (and Auden) never understood that truth as certainly as Rendra did, he has bequeathed future scholars with an obligation to analyse the chemistry of the breathtaking literary and thespian dynamite he used to achieve its realisation during his own lifetime.  Ma’afkan kenang2an saya yang begini syukurlah, mas; semoga berpulang dengan selamat!

 

 

Doug Miles (Centro In Contri Umani, Ascona Switzerland)

Email: miles.douglas09@gmail.com

 

 

REFERENCES

Mascara, (2009) Editorial, November, https://dev.mascarareview.com/editorial.html

Parini, J., (2008) Why Poetry Matters, New Haven, Yale UP

Rendra, W., (1978) The Struggle of The Naga Tribe (translated by Max Lane) Brisbane, University of Queensland Press

Rendra, W., (1978) Potret Pembangunan dalam Puisi, Jakarta, Balai Pusaka

Rendra W., (1979) SOB, Brisbane, University of Queensland Press

Wordsworth, W., (1800) “Observations Prefaced to Lyrical Ballads” in Harmon’s Classic Writings (pp. 279-296)


 

 

Debbie Lim Reviews “Feather Man” by Rhyll McMaster

Written by mascara on . Posted in Reviews/Essays.

Feather Man
 
by Rhyll McMaster
 
Brandl & Schlesinger, 2007
 
ISBN: 9781876040833
 
Reviewed by DEBBIE LIM
 
 
 
 
 
 
What repels can often also compel. In Feather Man, author Rhyll McMaster seems to know this as she draws us into the life of Sooky – a girl who is sexually abused by her neighbour in 1950s suburban Brisbane. The story opens with Sooky helping her perpetrator, Lionel, in his chook yard. By the third page, we cannot help but read in growing horror as Lionel commits the violation that will set up the damaging patterns that define Sooky’s relationships in adulthood.

The confronting scene in the chook shed could be a microcosm of the novel’s world. This is a visceral place that’s stifling and grubby, where women rank low in the social pecking order. But it’s also in these early pages that Sooky’s gift for observation becomes apparent:

I saw a pair of chook’s legs walk by my head. Even the chooks acted as if everything was normal… But my thighs looked unusual, the way Lionel had jacked them up and spread them apart. I wasn’t used to seeing them that way. They looked pale and nude, the inside of frogs’ legs, as if they were too unripe to be like that.

This ability to ‘see’ leads Sooky to become a successful painter in later years. Her capacity to find an idiosyncratic beauty amongst the urban squalor is also what allows us to venture into what could otherwise be a bleak setting. One morning, for example, when the adults are still asleep after a night of partying, she goes outside:

I walk out onto the grass in the sloping backyard and bend down.    There is much to look at in this close-up world. The heavy dew lies in tiny round crystal balls on the clover. A grasshopper with a green spike extending from its head springs out of nowhere onto my hand. Its mandibles graze my skin. I can feel it eating me…I am queen and king of this region and nothing can harm me.

Ultimately, Feather Man is a novel about self-identity. In Sooky’s case, it’s less the search for identity than a struggle to reclaim the ‘ordinary’ self that was taken from her by Lionel as a young girl. For while her artist’s eye is acute, her heart still knocks to the dysfunctional rhythms of childhood. After breaking off an engagement to a besotted but conventional footballer, Sooky marries her childhood idol, the charming Redmond – who is also the son of her abuser Lionel.

For Sooky, the attraction is primal:

The first and most important thing to mention about Redmond is his burnished hair. It is the colour my father brings up out of mahogany, as he polishes in small oily circles. The fox coat. Deep and rich, active, alien.

But Redmond also turns out to be a cruel narcissist. This becomes increasingly apparent after Sooky marries him and they move overseas so he can forge a career in the London art world.

It could be said that none of the characters in Feather Man are particularly likeable. Even Sooky is not conventionally endearing: she is blunt, obstinate and unpredictable. But it is also her lack of convention that makes her such a sympathetic character.

Neither is Sooky one of the two stereotypes she might easily have been: the victim quietly nursing her wounds or the veering car crash leaving a trail of debris. While she has aspects of both, she is intelligent, resilient, introspective and, perhaps most importantly, has agency. Her dispassionate observations can be blackly funny. For instance, during the first time she has sex with Redmond:

The moment has a flavour of clinical deadness. He has taken off his trousers and his shirt and I see he wears a string singlet. Oh, Redmond, I grieve.

Below the dreadful singlet, in the light from the street, I can see his erection. That looks funny too, a polyp or sea worm waving around in the current. I admonish myself: It is not really waving.

One of the achievements of Feather Man is that, via Sooky’s internal reflections, it explores the complicated and enduring relationship between victim and abuser. It is due to McMaster’s skill that, rather than bog down the narrative, these sections deepen the complexity and our understanding of the issue. With Sooky’s eyes, we see how the beast of abuse wears a coat of subtle shades of grey, how it operates in the liminal zone, where the back fence is ignored and boundaries blurred.

Since its publication in 2007, Feather Man has won the 2008 Barbara Jefferis Award. It remains a relevant and powerful book. I was also happily surprised to discover that Rhyll McMaster’s personal website provides detailed notes on the novel’s development. This includes original sections that were later edited out and even the initial reader’s report by the book’s publisher, Brandl & Schlesinger. It’s a fascinating and refreshingly open look into the author’s creative process.

Readers familiar with McMaster’s poetry (she has published six books of poems) will likely be fascinated to learn that her debut novel incorporates poems from two of her previous works (Flying the Coop and Chemical Bodies). According to McMaster, poems have been re-worked as prose in an ‘attempt at post post-modernism’. Also woven throughout are numerous references to fairy tales and nursery rhymes. 

The pages of Feather Man bristle with animal imagery. This is skillfully used to depict humans in all their brutality and strange complexity. Sooky’s father, for instance, keeps a tank of sea horses and anemones. However, his seeming fascination with the creatures reflects his disconnectedness and lack of self awareness:  

He liked the idea of horses and flowers underwater. He searched for the ridiculous or the out-of-place, the askew, the left-handed, like himself… He looked at those sea horses with so much incomprehension.

In another passage that echoed vaguely the voice in Nabokov’s Lolita, Sooky likens her susceptibility to Lionel’s attentions as unavoidable as basic cell replication:

Lionel, how I loved you…I was a plate of medium in a laboratory ready for someone to seed me with the bacteria of love. Anything might have stuck. Healthy, unhealthy, fungoid, parasitic. I couldn’t discern between them.

McMaster frequently uses animal similes to describe the characters, resulting in vivid portraits. It also lends a sense of dissociation, a certain fantastical edge. The ultimate beast, of course, is Lionel who is the menacing ‘Feather Man’ of the title. As the name suggests, he looms as a type of half-man half-animal, the childhood monster from the henhouse that eludes capture.  

The actual animals that appear in the novel typically don’t fare well under the custodianship of humans. The seahorse tank cracks and gushes its inhabitants onto the carpet, chickens are scalded and disembowelled, while the family cat is put down without warning and perfunctorily replaced. Overall, humans are seen as negligent and with a tendency to abuse power.

In Feather Man, life is a savage place where only the fittest survive. This is a powerful and uncomfortable work that refuses easy rescue. Although self-empowerment through art is one of its themes, in the end this is not a lofty tale. There are feathers on the ground, grit under the fingernails, and a sense that the wolf will always be watching from the shadows. Even so, in McMaster’s hands, there is a strange poetry to be found for those whose gaze remains unflinching.

 

 

Sushma Joshi: Shelling Peas and History Lessons

Written by mascara on . Posted in Fiction.

Sushma Joshi is a Nepali writer and filmmaker based in Kathmandu, Nepal. End of the World, her book of short stories, was long-listed for the Frank O’ Connor International Short Story Award in 2009. She co-edited New Nepal, New Voices (Rupa 2008). Art Matters, a book of art essays, was supported by the Alliance Francaise De Katmandou. Inspired by Nepali history and contemporary politics, her fiction and reportage deal with issues of social inequality, environment and gender. Sound of Silence (1997) her first documentary, was screened at the New Asian Currents at the Yamagata Documentary Film Festival. Water (2000) was screened on the Q and A with Riz Khan on CNN International, and the UN World Water Forum in Kyoto. The Escape (2006), a short about a teacher targeted by rebels, was accepted to the Berlinale Talent Campus. Joshi was born and grew up in Kathmandu. She studied in Dowhill School, Kurseong, for four years before finishing her education in Mahendra Bhawan and Siddhartha Vanasthali Institute. She received a BA in international relations from Brown University in 1996. She has a MA in anthropology from the New School, NY, and a MA in English Literature from Middlebury College, Vermont.Joshi contributes The Global and the Local, a weekly op-ed, to Nepal’s leading English daily, The Kathmandu Post.

 

Shelling Peas and History Lessons

“And then? And then?” Sapana asked, six-year-old impatience catching up with the slow pace of thought of an old woman.

            “Yes, yes,” said the old woman absently, caught up in a world that was a long time away from this hot, dusty May afternoon. A long time ago, when the mist covered the early mornings, and the ice froze on top of wells. Long ago, when she was still young enough to clamber barefoot on the winding, stony paths of the hills. Young enough to drink the icy water of the springs and let it wash away the pain in her legs. Young enough to nibble the chutro berries from the branches like the goats, and then sit down with a sharp splinter to take out the thorns embedded in the soles of her feet.

Bubu moved easily between these two worlds. This hot afternoon, with the sun baking the tiles of the verandah as she sat in the shade with the six-year-old in her yellow frock, shelling peas together to the distant roar of the traffic. And that other world of brown dust between the toes, the water that sprung out of the hills like a blessing, the echoes of people calling from one valley to the other.

            “It was a long time ago. Sixty, sixty-five years ago? Maybe more. I was small then, about eight maybe. Just a little older than you are now. All the little ones would be sent into the hills every morning to search for firewood.”

 Sapana dragged a straw mat down from the wall so she could sit comfortably on the scorching tiles. She was the only one at home. Buba and Ama were in the office, and so were all her uncles and aunts. They would get home only in the evening. Her school ended at three pm, unlike all her cousins, who got off at five. Sapana, left alone in an empty house, had finally wandered up to the roof, where Bubu was engaged in endless chores. Bubu, who usually did not say a whole lot, sometimes could be egged on to reveal a parable or ukkan-tukki that Sapana had never heard before. The old woman, with a turban of faded red cloth wrapped around her head, continued to shell the peas. The two green halves exploded under her calloused fingers, pop-pop, like corn popping open in heat.

“The jungles were still very thick then, not like today, where you have to walk for half a day if you want to find a tree,” said Bubu, stretching out her long legs in front of her. She was tall, taller than some of the men in the house. A faded choli was tied around her thin chest. Sapana could occasionally catch a glimpse of a withered breast through the gap in the middle of her blouse, which didn’t close. “I don’t know how the people will manage when those start running out. Anyway, we wouldn’t have to go very far those days. We would fill our patuka with popped corn, and eat that when the sun got hot in the sky.”

“Just popcorn? Nothing else?” asked Sapana. She popped a pea and felt the tender juice spurt out in her mouth. The softness of the green halves turned to pulp between her teeth. She stuck her tongue out to see the squelchy remains.

            “When we went to get the firewood, we would take the goats with us to graze, and some of the younger children would drink straight out of the teats. I never did that though. Disgusting habit,” said Bubu, wrinkling her patrician nose. Bubu noticed the empty pea-shells wilting in the heat, and pushed them under the shadow cast by the huge bottlebrush tree. The red brushes hung down in drunken lethargy, filled with the sweet honey hum of a thousand bees.

“Then there were the berries and amla that grew in the forest. The forest floor would be covered with them, we would not even have to climb the trees. Sometimes, if it was the season, we would put some soybeans and peanuts into our patuka too. Ah, those were delicious. You have to roast them over the hadi pot to get the flavor out. Now I don’t even have the teeth to bite them…”

            “But you always grind them up and put them in your tea,” said Sapana, pulling out the ragged edges of the straw mat. She now had a long straw in her hand, and she was carefully weaving the two ends into little Os to make a pair of spectacle frames.

            “That’s right, Baba. I shouldn’t complain. I have all my cares taken care of.”

            There was a long silence as the woman drifted off into another reverie. Her hands moved swiftly, automatically, her mind elsewhere. Sapana’s fingers slipped and slid over the pods, unable to pop them open like her Bubu was doing so effortlessly. She wondered when she would be able to shell like the old woman, when she would be able to pick them up and pop them open with speed and efficiency without mangling anything. When she would not have to rip them open with her teeth, and she could have an entire bowl of round peas without tooth-marks in them. All of the peas she had managed to extract in various stages of wholeness had either rolled into the grass or ended up discreetly in her own appreciative mouth.

She was more a hindrance than help, and she knew it. She also knew that Bubu’s patience was limited. In a short while, she would start getting irritated by either the flow of questions, or the wasteful shelling, and that would be the end of Sapana’s daily dose of both stories and peas. Sapana, with six-year-old wisdom, knew that she had to be judicious in order not to cut off the flow to either of these precious things. So the peas were popped into the mouth with uncanny timing each time Bubu looked away, and the solicitations only piped in when it looked like the old woman was too lost in her own thoughts to notice the prompting. 

            Bubu tolerated Sapana’s presence, her inquisitiveness, more than she tolerated many other things. The child was her little baba, her darling. She was not a demonstrative woman, and she had strict rules of impartiality towards her nine charges. But there was something about Sapana, who was the smallest and followed her around mercilessly, begging for lumps of sugar and stories with equal insistence, that made her special among all the children she had nursed. Perhaps she was still too innocent, and didn’t yet realize the rules of the world. Perhaps she would grow up to become a cold-hearted woman who would forget old Bubu, like all the other children before her had done.

Nobody even bothered to talk to her nowadays. She was just there, the servant who had been around for so long that people took her for granted, like the giant empty grain-jars in the basement. But Sapana still ran to her with her questions.

“How do you know a spider’s web brings wealth to a home?

“Why can’t Ama touch the loukat tree when she is bleeding?”

“Why is Mami being nasty to Sanuama?“

“Because a spider is lucky.”

“Because when a woman is bleeding she makes the crops die.”

“Because Mami thinks Sanuama is not doing enough work, and that she should stay at home instead of going to college.”

And then the answers, which were not really answers, would elicit more questions: Why is a spider lucky? How can a bleeding woman make the crops die? And why shouldn’t Sanuama go to college if her brothers can? The questions were never-ending, an answer promptly giving birth to the next inquiry, in an unending web of interrogation.

Bubu looked forwards to the times when the little girl would come running up, asking her slyly if she could help with shelling the peas, emptying herself of all of her questions in her head, and demanding to know the old woman’s too. The old woman hadn’t talked about her life for sixty-five years. Perhaps she had mentioned her brother to the woman who came to sell turmeric. It was difficult for her to talk about her life. Nobody had ever bothered to ask her, and she would not have told them anything even if they had asked. Indeed, why should they? But Sapana needed to know.

            “What about the tigers? You said there were tigers in the jungle. Weren’t you scared they were going to carry you away?”

            The old woman laughed, the laugh instantly turning to a hoarse cough. “The tigers never came near us. We would see them only from a distance; they were as scared of us as we were of them. I know of only one person who was attacked by a tiger, and that was by accident. He was walking at night alone, the idiot. You should never walk alone in the jungle at night, you never know what might happen.”

Sapana held her breath. It was one of those rare moments when the old woman’s mind rambled into exciting territory. She hoped Bubu would not lose her train of thought. Often times, Bubu would decide to stop the story randomly in the middle. Once in a while, she followed her stories to the end.

“He came too near to the cubs. The mother flew at him, and who can blame her. One has to protect one’s children, especially when their father is not around…”

“Did you have any children, Bubu?” asked Sapana.

            There was silence.  The traffic continued its muted roar in the distance. The koel bird went coo-hoo. Sapana felt a shock of fear at having breached an unknown taboo. Bubu had never talked about her children before.

“Did you?” Her voice muted was with fright, but she pressed on, because she was six and at six one knows only that one has to know, even when it is forbidden to know.

“Uuhuh. Long time ago. I had a son,” said Bubu. Her voice, rough as sandpaper, sounded almost soft.

“Where’s he now? Is he as big as me?” Sapana asked.

Bubu looked at the small figure sitting on the mat, straw frames perched on her nose. “He’s gone,” she replied gruffly. What would her son have looked like at the same age, she wondered.

“Oh.” Sapana felt a rush of pure shame, mixed with guilt. But death was a topic too close to her heart for her to stop wondering. The shame was overshadowed by the desire that had arisen to understand this sudden opening up of the secrets of Bubu’s life. Why had she never told Sapana that she had had a baby? Why had she kept it a secret? She knew it had to do with death, which was shadowy and smelt of old people and brought tears, hushed telephone conversations, and the puzzling disappearance of adults. Her father had not returned home when his great-uncle had died. He had re-appeared, with a shaved head, dressed all in white cotton, down to his tennis shoes, thirteen days later. Old people died all the time, and they were always talking about it right in front of her. But they always whispered when a baby died. 

“How did he die? Was he sick like Prerana diju? Will she die too? I don’t want her to die. We were planning to climb the loukat tree when she got well again. Now she’s covered with red blotches.” Sapana imagined her cousin being carried away on the back of men on green bamboo, tied up in a saffron shroud. She quickly wiped the thought out of her mind.

“Now don’t you two go up that old tree. Those branches are rickety. A branch might break and then you would be all set for the next six months. You saw what happened to Prakash, didn’t you?” Bubu asked sternly, waving a bony finger in front of Sapana’s face.

“He said he was Tarzan and he jumped out of the tree,” Sapana said, jumping up from the mat to show Bubu how Prakash Dada had done it. “He was right on top of a branch, and then he started to jump, and the branch went winggg!, and he fell. Like this,” she said, rolling on the floor to demonstrate.

“And broke his leg,” added Bubu.

“He has a white cast on his leg now,” said Sapana. Her cousin’s dare-devil exploit, which had brought him so much pain and popularity, had taken on the status of heroism in her mind. She could not help feeling that she needed a white cast, just like all her other cousins had done before her. Perhaps breaking a bone was like losing teeth. Everybody has to do it, and if you don’t, there must be something wrong with you, she thought.

“Are you planning to climb that tree?” queried Bubu, hearing the admiration in Sapana’s voice. 

“Nooo,” said Sapana. I can just climb the tree up to the fork between the two branches, and just sit there, she thought. I won’t jump on the branches.

“Yes? No?” Bubu asked, waving her finger threateningly. “Do I hear a lie?”

“No, I won’t do it,” Sapana said quickly, sensing threats bubbling in Bubu’s mind.

Bubu, satisfied, went back to her peas. “Of course, Prerana’s not going to die, you silly child. She’s just got the measles. Everybody gets it,” she said, wiping the sweat from her brows.

“Did Buba get it? Did Ama get it? Did you, Bubu?” Sapana looked at Bubu, her skin hanging like a soft, washed leather pouch from the bones of her face. It was unblemished, except for two big, black moles next to her lips.

“Sure I did. I got it particularly bad. I had to stay in bed for months,” Bubu said. She remembered the hours of loneliness sleeping in the bed, recovering from sickness. But her grandmother had been there to brew her concoctions, and she had slowly recovered.

            “Did everyone in your house catch it? Mami says I mustn’t go near Prerana Diju because I’ll get it, then it’ll pass to everyone, even the baby. Did your son get measles too?” Sapana added.

“No. He was too young to get measles,” Bubu answered.

“So how did he die?” Sapana knew she was going to get scolded very soon, but she had to know. She wet the tip of her index finger with spit and traced an elaborate face with three eyes on the hot tile.

“He died when I came down into the valley.” Bubu’s face, turned slightly away, looked lost in thought.

“Why did you come down, then? Why did you not stay at home?” Sapana asked. The saliva had evaporated instantly, leaving her with nothing.

“Stop asking so many questions. It’s rude. Women should not ask so many questions,” Bubu answered shortly.

“But I don’t want you to be all alone. Where are your Mamu and Buba?” Sapana asked, distressed. She could not believe Bubu was holding back this essential information from her.  

            “Well, it’s a little too late for me to be having a mother and father, let me tell you.” said the old woman, chuckling. “My mother and father are long dead. They lived in Bhimsen Tole, where my brother is now, and… “

            “When is your brother coming, Bubu?” Sapana interrupted. Bubu complained constantly about how her brother did not come to visit her more often. Sapana had been five when she first saw Bubu’s brother. They had sat outside on the bench, talking for hours in low voices. Sapana, running up to sit next to Bubu, had felt uncomfortable, as if she was not supposed to be there. Bubu had turned to look at her with a far-away glance. Sapana knew Bubu wanted to be alone, so she had left, reluctantly. Sapana felt jealous of the brother, who only came rarely but yet got such lavish attention. Bubu belongs to our family!, she wanted to clarify to the brother. But he was so big, and had such a gruff voice, that she decided it was safer not to say it. Maybe he wanted to take Bubu back to the village. Maybe Bubu would decide she no longer wanted to live with them, pack her boxes, and leave. Bubu’s brother, in his long-drawn out drawl, talked about whose land had been bought and sold, whose daughters had gotten married, whose sons had left the village to go to the city. Two days later, he left, carrying a tin trunk filled with clothes that Bubu had bought with her savings.

            “Uhh, who knows,” went on Bubu, without pausing. “He tells me he has too many things to do in the village. But he’s not too busy to come down when he needs the money. He was pampered because he was the only son. Not me. I was the eldest among eight.” Bubu shooed a crow that had been hopping closer and closer, head tilted consideringly on one side, eyeing the bowl of peas.

 “I didn’t get to live with my parents very long. I was married off to another village seven kos away when I was nine years old. Same age as your Priti Diju. Just two years older than you, my girl.”

            “Weren’t you sad about leaving all your friends, Bubu? Did you tell them that you wanted to live at home?” Sapana asked, troubled now. She imagined Prerana Diju getting married and going away to another place seven kos away. She didn’t even know how big a mile was. Maybe it was far away as India, or China, or even farther. How horrible. Then she would never be able to play with her Diju again.

            “That would have done me a lot of good now, wouldn’t it,” said Bubu derisively. The old woman had a bite to her that could sometimes scare the children. “It was different in those days. Not like now, where you have all these girls old enough to be the mothers of five babies staying at home. Behaving like children themselves. They have no shame nowadays. All the girls then were married by eight or nine. If one was not married by then, people would begin to think there was something wrong with the girl.”

            Sapana did not like it when Bubu got started to get into these frightening moods, when she suddenly became stern and started talking about marrying girls off. The worst was usually when she started singing:

euti chori, mayaki dori, abha kasle lane ho

One daughter, a thread of love, I wonder who will take her away. 

Sapana hated that song. She maintained a cautious silence.

“My parents were lucky to find me my husband. He was the son of a rich family. His family was rich, they were. Owned seven cows and hillsides of land,” Bubu reminisced almost triumphantly.

 “I’ll be seven in four months,” Sapana reminded Bubu. She wanted Bubu to know that she was too small to be married.

“Yes, that’s right. Seven, or eight? Seven, I think. I was nine when I got married. My husband was older, much older. Twenty-three-years older…”

            “Twenty-three-years?” Sapana could not fathom this age difference. It sounded enormous.

            The old woman looked at her with something like slightly condescending contempt; an almost benign malignancy. She alarmed Sapana when she became like this, almost as if she would declare that girls should still get married at nine even in these changed times. “We weren’t sitting at home going to school like you, Baba. We got married early. People didn’t look for husbands the same age, as they do nowadays. I got pregnant when I was thirteen.”

“Where’s your husband now?” Sapana asked, trying to change the conversation. She sneaked another pea into her mouth as the old woman turned to get a broom to sweep up the pods.

“The river took him. There was a massive flood, one, two years after we were married. The bridge was swept away. Then the men went down to see if they could re-build it. They say he went too close. There were lots of rocks under the water that you could not really see…”

” Did your Sasu kick you out of her house, like Sukumel did when Daya’s husband died?” Bubu swatted away the little hand that was sneaking into the bowl of peas as if it were a fly. Sapana retreated hastily. The old woman could be deceptive, appearing  to be lost in her thoughts when she really wasn’t at all. 

“My mother-in-law was a kind woman,” Bubu said reflectively. “Kinder than the rest. She let me live in the house until the baby was born. She could easily have sent me back to my parents house, but she didn’t. Then they thought I would have a better life if I came down to the valley, worked at one of the big houses. So they sent me down.”

“Did you want to leave your village, Bubu?” asked Sapana, anxiously. She wanted to think that Bubu was here because she wanted to be here, not because she had been forced to.

“It didn’t matter what I wanted,” said Bubu, tiredly. “Who would listen to me? But I wanted to leave too. I thought my son would have a better life down here. Old man Astha helped me to get into the Ranaji’s house. Then they sent me here because the Ranaji’s wife didn’t want me in her house.”

“Ranaji’s wife sent you here because she was afraid her husband would want to marry you. Because you were pretty. Ruku told me. She said the wife must have been jealous of you. Ruku said so.”

“Ruku is an old chatterbox,” said Bubu, straightening up and lifting her chin in the air. “She talks too much. When I came here, the eldest Dulahi-saab had just given birth. She couldn’t suckle her own child. She was a princess, you know, and princesses didn’t do that then. She was the granddaughter of Chandra Shamsher Maharaja. I hear the young women do whatever they want nowadays. Feeding children out of bottles. Whoever heard of such nonsense. The  women now, they have no sense.”

“Darshana drinks out of a bottle. Will she grow up to have no sense too?”

“No. She’s a bright child. She will have sense. Anyway, they hired me to be the dhai for Mohan-raja. Yes, he was a little baby then. I remember it as if it were yesterday. Now he’s balding, he looks old.” Bubu had been happy at the idea of nursing two babies. She had imagined that the two of them would suckle her together, one on the left, the other on the right. “But they said there was not enough milk.”

“And then?” Sapana held her breath. The peas were all shelled. Inside her closed hand Sapana had a fistful of peas that she had removed from the bowl and which she was saving for later. The old woman usually went inside the kitchen after all the vegetables were done. Would she leave Sapana hanging in the middle?

Bubu ambled around for a bit, then dragged out the comb from underneath the straw mat and started to comb her hair. “So my son had to be sent away. They gave him to Hira to look after. Remember the old woman with goitre who comes here and brings us bay leaves? That was Hira.” Bubu raked the bamboo comb through her hair. “She used to come here occasionally, so the mistress asked her to look after my child for a bit of money.” She stopped to pull out the strands of silver hair entangled in the bamboo teeth. Sapana knew there was no need for prompting. The old woman was talking almost as if she was all alone.

“I remember that last day, holding him in my arms, feeling him breath before Hira took him into her back. She stopped coming to the house after that. I heard she used to come looking for me with the child in her arms, but nobody called me because they thought that if I was upset that would effect the milk.”

             The sun slowly dipped down through the purple blooms of the jackaranda trees. A loud clamoring broke the silence as the crows came back home to roost in the bottlebrush branches. “And then?” said Sapana, underneath her breath.

“So then I never saw my child again. I heard he died six months later.” Bubu had found out about the death of her child only two years later. They had told her he was well and thriving. She had asked the mistress to give all of her salary to Hira. Hira later told Bubu that she never received any money, not even the promised stipend. Hira said she gave him all the food she had in the house, but that was just rice, and he couldn’t eat that, and she did not have the money to buy him any milk.

“She said that when he died he was just skin and bones…” Bubu’s face, pure silhouette in the sunset, was fathomless. But Sapana felt her pain, musky and old, curling up like smoke in the evening air.

A pack of street dogs started to howl, cutting through the sounds of the temple-bells. Sapana felt the loneliness in a way she never had before, a sharp cutting loneliness that seemed to transmit from the old woman and seep into her throat, making her heavy from hurting. She wanted to say something to comfort Bubu, but no words came. She waited, feeling the pain, dark blue as the night sky that was starting to descend. Slowly, the old woman picked up the bowl of peas, and walked into the kitchen. A few seconds later, a small bottle filled with kerosene and a wick flickered alight onto the surface of the windowsill. Only then did the little girl follow her inside.

 

Eileen Chong

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Eileen Chong is a Singapore-born, Sydney-based writer and photographer. An essay of hers was published in Hecate in 2008. Her poetry has appeared in the first issue of Meanjin this year. Her Polaroid photography has been featured in D2, a Norwegian arts magazine. She lives with her husband and two moggy cats.

 

 

 

What a poem is

A poem is a heavy thing. It weighs
as you scrub the potatoes,
rub them with salt, then decide
to boil them instead. A poem
is a heavy thing. You carry its strain
as you lay plates on the table, as you set
out cutlery. A poem is
a heavy thing. Even the brownness
of the chicken’s skin reminds you
of your grandfather’s hands
in the dirt. Of his feet on the deck
when he caught the fish. A poem is a heavy
thing. You’d wanted greens
but instead bought beansprouts, pale
with their arching necks, tails intact
because you couldn’t bear the smell
of your grandmother’s hours
at the sink: plucking, washing, plucking.
A poem is a heavy thing.
When your husband comes
home from work, you think
man, labour, dust, evensong
as he kisses you and asks
how your day was. Heavy,
you tell him. Heavy.

 

Blue Velvet

I bought her those shoes. I was the only one
who ever bought her shoes. I knew her
size. I knew what she liked. She’d always
picked on me, but I was the only one
who ever bought her shoes
in her size that she liked.

She had told her oldest son
that when death called
for her, she wanted to be wearing
those shoes. He said
they were house slippers, too flimsy
for her walk in the other world.

Yet in the end, afraid, he gave me
the shoes – hand-embroidered
with phoenixes decked out
in sequins, gold thread, green
beads for eyes – I sheathed
the old lady’s cold, rigid feet.

Thank god I had bought them
in blue, not red. She would not
have been allowed to been buried
in anything red. Not unless we wanted her
to come back from the dead, shuffling
in those slippers, going to the courtyard
to beat the night’s blankets
in the dawning sun.

 

Summer in London

Summer in London is not
to be experienced without
a raincoat and an umbrella.
London cabs are big and black
but their drivers are not. The British Museum
is a collection of loot. The pubs
are the same as English pubs everywhere. The food
is awful. The train stations are beautiful
with their skeletons of efficiency
and clockwork hearts. Trains coming
and leaving like lovers, disgorging passengers
like bile. The Underground is exciting, but only
in name. The warrens smell
of pee. The streets have the same names
as the streets in Singapore, in Australia.
We’ve all dreamt
of Piccadilly Circus. Mine is complete
with horse-cabs, bobbies and whips. It turns out to be
just a rather large roundabout. The hotel
is not grandiose. The bed
has broken springs. At night I turn to you
but, your back hurting, you face
away. I close my eyes
but London calls. My London
with its clocks and castles and
the will-o-the-wisp shimmering
over the moonlit moors.

 

Anindita Sengupta

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Anindita Sengupta’s full-length collection of poems City of Water was published by Sahitya Akademi earlier this year. Her work has previously been published in several journals including Eclectica, NthPosition, Quay, Yellow Medicine Review, Origami Condom, Pratilipi, Cha: An Asian Journal, Kritya, and Muse India. It has also appeared in the anthologies Mosaic (Unisun, 2008), Not A Muse (Haven Books, 2009), and Poetry with Prakriti (Prakriti Foundation, 2010). In 2008, she received the Toto Funds the Arts Award for Creative Writing and in 2010, she received a writer’s fellowship from the Charles Wallace India Trust for the University of Kent, England. She has contributed articles to The Guardian (UK), The Hindu, Outlook Traveler and Bangalore Mirror. She is also founder-editor of Ultra Violet, a site for contemporary feminism in India.

 

 
Entropy

(to grandfather)

 

A fuchsia scatter in the courtyard:
the bougainvillea dishevels.

 

Sheila and I squat on the back porch 
where the clothesline frays in the wind.
Elephant grass gnaws at cement
and a spider silks the windows shut.

 

‘Weeds have outgrown
mangoes this year,’ she says,

rubbing her sheared head
with one hand. I light a cigarette.

 

We drag quick and sharp,
as if you’ll still tap down
the garden path, find us there,
grown-up children,
shame us with a frown.

 

The house falls in flecks—
our clutch of childhood
now wasteland, warm dust,
wormhole.

 

 

 

Storm-Chasing

 

I came to find the essence of it,
to taste on my tongue its whiteness
like sugar crystals.
I came for the blur and hurry,
the blurry hurl,  the hurly-burly
of devastation.
I rattled up in a red jeep, battling  
eyes open against wind.
Past my window flew bits of paper,
tin cans, a shirt from a forgotten clothesline. 
I hunkered down, gripped the wheel,
and pressed my big toe
on the accelerator. (Speed was essential.
It would distract me from fear.) 
I came for the infinite moment.
I came to chill the tornado’s coil 
around me like a giant python.
I came to risk blood.
I came to inhale the un-breathable breath
and fill up like a balloon.
I came to burst or rise,
to dazzle through air like Dorothy,
to dissolve like stardust.
I came to find that one moment
when nothing mattered. Not sex
or sin or ache. Not even love.

There are things a storm can do to you, darling,
that you wouldn’t imagine. 
 

 

We left Bombay to start over

 

We left Bombay to start over.
It was tumbling rain and vegetarians.
Strings of sausage, once hung like rosaries
at grocery stores, were replaced with rows
of frozen peas. Orange flags had gagged
lesbian flicks. Between polls and pools,
we didn’t know which was dirtier.
A stampede was due.
We left because there was money to be made
in a city with thighs of steel. We left
because hope is tiny and lodges
between a man’s ribs like cancer. But mostly,
we left because we were promised things.
We flew south like geese, twigged a nest
in the outsider neighborhood.
Flyovers flayed the city
but none would hook us across.
We didn’t know that then.
I sat in cafés, scrabbled for love,
stashed postcards like stamps,
tried to stop sneezing.
There comes a time
when home and home
begin to sound the same.
That hasn’t happened yet.
But I’m told a decade’s
too short.

 

Vikram Teva Raj

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Vikram Teva Raj is a 24-year-old Singaporean in his second year of a Bachelor of Creative Arts at the University of Wollongong. These two poems are his first published pieces. “An Old Vintage” was inspired by a Chinese rentmate, while “My Turkish Rentmate at 37” was about a Turkish rentmate, now 38. He lives comfortably, on account of never having shown them the things.

 

 

 

An Old Vintage

For Tony

 

A bird is long dead by my pathway home,

frosted over in the humidity of spring and stiff,

a crumbling baseball glove sloughed down to just the dark palm

and a taut white finger pointing down the road.

 

Here is our garden with the pruned tree

that in its day never failed to raid our laundry,

its green scissor-fingers now excised,

ghost limbs capped by beige fingernails

tight around a new feathering

like the shattered telltales of a more meaty diet.

 

The clouds are crossing like crazed yarn on a dark loom

that promises cold fire tailing up the breath of the road

right through my balcony door: a sliding grille under strong fabric

that you might expect to keep the rain inside down to a vague dust

but which is more like a fan leaning water in out of the wet.

 

Now I see a hand forming in the sky,

a long, ornate jester’s cap twisting slowly

like a compound whale, wrung by an invisible fist

to spout from each teat a slow, heavy liquid,

decanting the length of each belly

to filter down muslin miles to land.

 

As the rain’s curtains snap in the wind and the ground outside

trembles like a tight sail, I see again through unformed crystal

my Chinese father, pouring warm wine out for my new family,

 

pledging a dowry of close-smelling currency

sealed by the ancient unlit tallow

that melts between changing hands.

 

 

 

My Turkish Rentmate at 37

 

Reminiscent of NatGeo pics

of that sea eyed Afghan girl

before and after ten adult years,

her face clearly once magnificent

ravaged by her Turkish life spent

designing Renault dashboards

and famous brands of fridge.

 

She stutters around in English

asking our rentmate the unhappy professor

horrible, tactless things he patiently answers

like she was his wayward first son

paying attention again.

 

Coming in, she didn’t hide her disgust

at how moth-eaten the place was.

She gave up and then a week later

everything was new and she’d got herself a TV,

silently mouthing along with old Hollywood.

 

She was going to learn accounting

but her own balance meant a bad job now

but she thinks a hairdressing course

would be hard money in the long run.

 

The other day her door was open.

 

Table, toiletry bag, carpet, window,

it was all grey save her white down jacket

and black TV: dust-free,

 

her own Gone With The Dead

of windrows of ash neat enough

for answering machines.

 

 

 

Liam Ferney

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Liam Ferney is a former poetry editor of Australian online magazine, Cordite. His first collection Popular Mechanics was published by Interactive Press in 2005. He lives in Brisbane, Queensland.

 

 

 

“Room 14, please.”
 

Apparently Singapore is an island.

At the expat bakery

                        desperate for a macchiato.

It has been years since mangoes

& I wonder if too much rice

            leads to forsaken cereal

while Obama wins a primary & Rudd says sorry.

 

The days between dispatches

            have grown long & I can’t

gurney the dust from my knees.

& the noise from next door,

            as unlikely as it seems,

a muezzin’s call to morning prayers.

 

 

 

Portraits of Famous People

 

“Even when the subject is different,

people paint the same painting.”

                                                                Andy Warhol

 

for Luke

 

It was supposed to have been a gift. When she asked for it back he had turned to stand in the doorway, as elegant as an apartment block. As rugged as William Holden he held secrets like trump cards. There was a right time for martinis but that had passed. “You were always going to leave,” she said. As wistfully as an unbeliever’s incantation. And he looked beyond the Bugatti appliances, out towards the balcony. This city was no grid. The characters: just imagined. And when the hour passed it disappeared. A click, indistinct from the 3600 that had proceeded it.

 

 

 

 

Houses of Neglect

 

A door ajar, the louvered window

through to a retreating brown roof,

the tips of the gums fingerpoking

into the oil paint perfect blue sky.

 

To win at this game you’ve got to lose;

every jazz man propping up a bar

scatting along with Trane about the one

that got away attests to this.

 

The problem is familiarity,

slipping in and out

of it’s private school uniform

forgetting that every star

 

is for someone a setting sun.

To avoid didacticism and melodrama

you play like a politician and keep it obtuse

not letting on, you still don’t understand

 

what it was you did

to leave everything as busted as a Nissan Pulsar

the colour of curdled milk, weeds pushing

through the floor in late summer humidity

 

like oil in a Texas dirtbowl.

The neighborhood cottoning on

and the parts start to disappear,

first the radio, then the battery, the alternator

 

some hoon strips the tyres before

the last cheeky monkey flogs the engine.

 

 

Alex Skovron

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Alex Skovron was born in Poland, lived briefly in Israel, and came to Australia aged nine. He is the author of five poetry collections, most recently Autographs (prose-poems, 2008), as well as a prose novella, The Poet (2005). Awards for his poetry include the Wesley Michel Wright Prize, the John Shaw Neilson Award, the Australian Book Review Poetry Prize, and for his first book, The Rearrangement (1988), the Anne Elder and Mary Gilmore awards. His novella was joint winner of the FAW Christina Stead Award for fiction. He lives in Melbourne and works as a freelance editor.

 
 

 

The Mist

We chased each other, childish, hilarious,
Round and around the lit kitchen table
That multiplied for cardgames, meals, painting
Of eggs at Easter, shelling of beans.

As I swerved laps of tablecloth – the mirth
Of the occasion as much a mystery
As a measure of the reason for itself –
A futileness, strange but convivial,

Passed like a limpid mist across the memory
Of something I had yet no right to know.
As if you think you could catch me, is one way
The mist translates itself. As if it matters …

It was a moment of pure insight, distilling
A recognition sharper than wisdom –
Bright as a giggle, its closing ellipsis
Muffled in the frenzy of our running.

The point, it laughed, and I understood:
Whether or not they caught me round that table
Was not the point. What mattered
Was the clamour of their wanting, the complicity

Of wood, the night at the window, the clock
And the crockery trembling above us,
The playcards scattered, our conspiracy
Of laughter – and most precious of all,

That shiver of a question, fleeting, permanent,
As if it could ever let go of me …

 

Night-Errand

A man lies awake gazing
at the curtain into the past
that hangs in front of his eyes.

He can discern shifting images
beyond the delicate gauze
and the ache in his diaphragm

Is pleasure and regret,
the silent curlicues of desire
trapped in the chamber’s gloom.

The future is hurting
but he knows nothing about the future,
he traces the trembled outlines

Of each dancing apparition
(for each dancing apparition is
himself), and struggles for focus.

He strains to re-enter
the cathedral of the past, it is prayer
(the past is prayer)

And he could worship there
if only the gauze would clear
and he touch the flesh

Of history. Because he needs
to know again, know
again, he needs to touch

The outlines, pry them apart,
push his entire being
into every last one of them

And maybe then, maybe
then he would know
why the curtain is forever

Stirring in the breeze
of his desires, why the gauze
shimmers like reprimand,

And why each curlicue
of the music that breathes him
is singing the irony of time.

 

 

Maya Khosla: Red-Tailed Hawk

Written by mascara on . Posted in Fiction.

Maya Khosla was raised in India, England, Algeria, Burma, Bhutan, and Bangladesh. Those cultures as well as her background in biology strongly shaped her writing. As an independent wildlife biologist, Maya is comfortable wandering through oak woodlands or waist-deep in silty waters (wearing chest waders). Her books include “Keel Bone,” (poetry from Bear Star Press; 2003 Dorothy Brunsman Award), “Web of Water: Life in Redwood Creek,” (nonfiction from Golden Gate National Park Conservancy Press, 1997) and “Heart of the Tearing,” (poetry from Red Dust Press 1995). Performing, teaching and writing have earned her awards from the Headlands Center for the Arts, Poets and Writers Inc., and the Ludvig Vogelstein Foundation.

 

Red-Tailed Hawk

 
The flowers you give
are my maps. If I am ever lost
their petals’ scent will pull me
toward your musk again.
 
           
January 1, 2008
 
It’s a cloud-lidded morning. Thoroughly soaked, the fenceposts lining my little backyard are stained so dark the lichen growing on them looks fluorescent green by comparison. Rain is a mark of auspicious beginnings, though Michael just walked out of my condo with his spare motorcycle helmet and running clothes.
 
“I’m moving to the Philippines, Tash,” he declared before leaving. “It’s home.”
 
He has often mused about emigrating. But the emphasis on home gave his announcement a ring of conviction I haven’t heard before. We were standing in my condo hallway next to the stairs going up to my bedroom, where we shared New Years resolutions last night. I searched the olive-green flecks mixed into the browns of his pupils that drew me in from the moment of our first date, years ago, when he lifted me into the air in spite of a sore left shoulder.
 
But this morning his eyes were too dark to see the greens. He sank to the edge of my second stair to tie his shoelaces.
 
Michael was raised in the Philippines. His Dominican mother, siblings and the online game company he works for are all based there. I’ve visited Manila, Kanlubang, and Makiling with him. I too have most of my family overseas, in India. So I sympathize with his sense of home in a distant country of seven thousand-plus islands. It’s the warmth, the ability to buy a single cigarette, to figure out ways to return home from office for an afternoon nap. It’s the tropical air that can get so heated and heavy with moisture that when it breaks into drizzle, it’s hard to notice the difference.
 
He stood again, filling my condo hallway.
 
“Give me a hug? I won’t be seeing you again.” He leaned forward, arms reaching, the fingers of his square hands spread. His lips were in a pout, his eyes focused, intent.
 
I shook my head. As if yielding meant he would leave my place, California, the country. As if leaving without that hug meant he would have to reconsider.
 
When he turned to fumble with the front door locks and pick up the helmet, his right hand came within inches of me. I felt an urge to grab and shake it vigorously. He slipped out and I held the door open, breathing in the scent of post-drizzle moisture.
 
Sun behind veils, salts of loss on the tongue. An Anna’s hummingbird dashed past in a streak of shiny vermilion, wings beating about eighty times a minute, like a pulse racing over words held down. Its speed emphasized its ground level opposite, a two-legged trapped as if in torpor, unable to rush out and beckon her partner back.
 
It’s quiet here; guilt deadbolts me in. I made him leave. My hallway looks whole shades dingier. The dining table and its contents, two freshly drained tea mugs, a persimmon and a sliver of leftover fruit loaf, shrink-wrapped in plastic, hold the weight of a recent conclusion.  Upstairs, my unmade bed is too tousled to allow for a quick smoothing over. It needs to be stripped and redone.
 
The blooms he brought me yesterday are louder in his absence—red so saturated it looks wet. They are a reminder. We had planned a morning hike. The remainder of today was supposed to form neatly around the crystal of its there-and-back symmetry, the sweet scents and rush of blood and breath.
 
Last week’s storms have filled the North Bay’s soils and streams and enriched its forests and meadows with every color except this drained gray of sky. I have spent twelve winters here working out in the wild, so I know. Coho salmon are torpedoing up towards their deaths against the flow of swollen creeks. Frogs are emitting creaky calls from under umbrellas of dripping ferns. Bulb-bright highlights of new growth are re-greening every limb-tip of every bishop pine, redwood and fir. When a hawk alights, the branch gripped in its circlets of claws will shake and sway and splash. Winter wrens and varied thrushes in the vicinity will fall silent.
 
I haven’t the energy to emerge.
 
Michael is driving south to his home in Novato. Inside his car, he will switch the air vent back to ‘cold’ since I’m not with him. He will brush his hair impatiently with his left hand, the dark curls springing back after each stroke as if in protest. His eyes will be locked ahead as he waits for a chance to enter the right lane, glide past the slower car and swing back across highway dots and dashes.
 
The New Years resolutions we bantered about seem utterly irrelevant. Mine included accomplishing symbolic nuggets of what I hope to achieve within the next three hundred and sixty four days. “First thing’s first: begin it feeling new,” my mother used to launch forth. “Wear pressed clothes without a trace of past perfumes. Take six deep breaths at an open window. Make modest wishes…”
 
I do. Today they were good food and exercise, fresh air and water, a respectable chunk of work and a search for bobcats, raptors and frogs. These were the seeds I wanted to set, the emblems of my intentions for 2109.
 
Moving to the window, I twist the angle of the faux bamboo blinds and put my face close. A cold smell is all. A few weeks ago Michael gripped my battery-powered drill in both hands and worked on each fitting with single-minded diligence, asking me to hand him a nail here, a bracket or a blind there, stepping back to view it before moving on to the next one. Hours later he had installed them in all my windows. We whispered our verdict in unison.
 
“Wow!”
 
He drew down the new blind, placed my drill inside its blue box on the coffee table and closed the distance between us. When we kissed, a slight leak in his right nostril wet my upper lip. I moved to wipe myself and he drew back to clean his nose with a quick apology. He was just as quick to advance again. The thudding in my ears blended with the salts and frictions of touch and the nose-drip was forgotten — until we parted to climb the stairs and the same wet spot chilled with evaporation.
 
When I get the angle correct, cloud-light glances off the blinds’ buttery hue and lights up the red and yellow cushions scattered across two futons that frame one corner of my living room. On the shelf in my downstairs closet is the new brocade sweatshirt I planned to throw on before leaving. Next to it a blank space where Michael’s white motorcycle helmet was stored. The sight propels me upstairs. On the top shelf of my bedroom closet, his running tea shirt and shorts were kept folded next to my field shirts that have clung to their mud-and algae-stains through wash cycles. He’s neater than I am. He’s meticulous. Even the absence of clothes looks rectangular.
 
I can’t bring myself to move my shirts and woolen shawls over to fill the empty space. Leaving it empty falls in the same category as refusing him the goodbye-hug. It’s a safeguard that could protect against an absence so complete it’s irreversible. Against losing my grip on those arms that looked weighty with rest just hours ago in this room.
 
The dishes, counters, and tabletop are clean, the bed made. I pressed the persimmon from its ends so the flesh gave, easily, two halves of a whole. The orange flesh had the consistency of an overripe mango but was sweeter, chalkier, full of rich sugars and salts. It was comfort food.
 
I threw away the fruit loaf that began our quarrel. I had taken it out of the freezer and warmed it in lieu of my homemade date-oatmeal bars, which I had run out of.
 
Michael eyed the density of fruit and nut between bites.
 
“Who’s been here? You had a whole loaf a couple of days ago.”
 
“This? It’s been sitting in the freezer,” I argued.
 
Still chewing, he scanned my living room and shook his head.
 
“I don’t think so. Look at those two cushions lying by the fireplace. You’ve had company. Recently.”
 
I tried to remember when my friends Susan, Mella, and Sally had been over, whether they’d eaten much of the loaf. We had met sometime before Christmas, probably two weeks ago. Then I realized it didn’t matter what I said.
 
Michael was chuckling, shaking his head. “Tash, it’s obvious someone’s been here. Cozy evening with him?”
 
“You know what, Michael? Enough.”
 
He stared at his empty tea mug as though making a calculation. Then he sprang up. “You know what? It’s obvious you’re involved with someone. I’ll do the same.”
 
“I think you need to leave,” I heard myself say. He responded with the wide-eyed gaze of a frightened child. Then he went around the corner and I listened to the thump-thump of his feet up the stairs.
 
It’s 1:44 p.m. When I get online, Michael is there too.
 
“I am completely devasted and cant even breath,” he begins his chat.
 
He’s back. Except the misspellings reveal a carelessness rare for him.
 
He types, “I just can’t imagine being without the love of my life and yet I bring us so much pain and turmoil.”
 
It’s a shot of lucid light searing the gloom. Perhaps we’ll get through this. He writes that even his divorce was easier than losing me.
 
“You are not losing me!” I reply.
 
“It’s this seroquel,” he writes. “It’s making me crazy.” Seroquel is his latest antidepressant.
 
Two hundred and ten emoticons of a face in tears arrive on my screen. I have never understood how he does that so fast. I want to reach through the electronic windows separating us and cover the hands that type unfiltered fears and push the return button with the urgency of one who is trying to check his fall in a dream.
 
He does not mention the fruit loaf or cushions.
 
It’s a little over a mile to the cement-lined ponds and greens of Sonoma State University. I’ve worn my new sweatshirt for ritual’s sake, and a rain jacket over it. There are footprints ahead, but no one else is walking the Copeland Creek Trail now. No one is playing in the football field south of my path. The creek is invisible behind a riparian world that has risen like fire; swaths of green and nubs of new leaves-to-be are pointing skyward like a multitude of hopes. Their savings account, groundwater, is rich and gurgles underground like a secret.
 
There is a slap and suck to each step through muddy softness. Crossing a puddle the brown of soil-flour, I think of the hike we missed this morning. The same eight miles through Point Reyes National Seashore along Bear Valley Creek became a habit for us long before Michael’s counselor began giving him prescriptions for antidepressants. We stuck with the eight: Bear Valley Trail to Meadow, Meadow to Sky, Sky to Mt. Whittenberg and back down to Bear Valley. Is there some significance to our missing out on the first of the year? Was it best, asking him to leave when I did?
 
A white-crowned sparrow clings to a spindle-thin twig among a perfusion of bare branches. Its gold beak is an ember opening to release a series of plaintive trills. I watch with binoculars. It catches sight of me and dips into the creek-side tangle.
 
A red-tailed hawk circles on the air thermals above. Its tail swivels and I catch a glimpse the red dorsal feathers. My binoculars magnify the down-turned head, shifting slightly from side to side as it scans the football field. Hunting is a swift dream, mired in instinct but crisp with the single-minded focus of pursuit. 
 
In a breath, it bunches up its wings, extends its claws and plunges fieldward. A predator’s drive looks so sure, yet it is in the dark about itself. The wings unfurl as claws touch grass. Now it’s hopping, now still.  Apparently it has missed its target.
 
A few seasons ago I encountered a fallen red-tail. That too was a cloud-wrapped day. I was surveying for burrowing owls in rolling grasslands close to Altamont Pass, where wind turbines cover the ridge-tops for miles. The raptor must have collided with the turbine roaring above us.
 
“If you throw a large cloth over it,” a woman at the nearest wildlife rehabilitation center explained when I called, “it will calm down. If you don’t have one, back off or you’ll risk having your wrists lacerated.”
 
I shed my fleece jacket and spread it wide, measuring. It was no large cloth. I made a split-second decision and advanced in terror. The bird stood regal, head rising, hooked beak bared, crest feathers standing. They looked damp—rain or sweat? Every inch of its foot and a half tall body was designed to intimidate.
 
Still, I advanced closer. It took one hop away. The left wing was dragging in a pathetic antithesis of the poise that was using up so much of its body’s meager energy savings. It raised the talons of one leg at me with a predator’s regal fury. The beak was still bared. I couldn’t afford to hesitate. Let instant darkness calm it.
 
I had been given good rules over the phone; I had sat through training classes in Golden Gate Raptor Observatory before that. But when the moment closed in, adrenalin-fired fear eclipsed all thought. 
 
I dropped my fleece on the bird and all was very quiet. I bent double and gathered up the raptor in my jacket. It had calmed down— immediately. It sat still, trapped, light as held breath.
 
Walking uphill with arms outstretched, I was panting soon. My car was parked under the wind turbine and its wails grew and grew as I neared the ridgeline. Inside my jacket, all was so still that there were moments when I was convinced the red-tail had slipped out. I turned back once, but the capture spot was already out of view.
 
Was it comfortable inside? Would it heal, hover in the updrafts again to decipher—the way no human eye can—the day-glow ultraviolet ribbons of mouse urine, the twitching, racing maneuvers that must look utterly futile from a bird’s eye view?
 
And most important, had I folded the broken wing correctly, given it enough breathing room?
 
I didn’t dare check. Awareness of a human face would have caused more stress to the bird. The questions were torture, though. They haven’t left me, though I now know one of the answers.

 

 

Andy Quan Reviews “Equal To The Earth” by Jee Leong Koh

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Equal To The Earth

by Jee Leong Koh

Bench Press, 2009

http://www.benchpresspoetry.com/

Reviewed by ANDY QUAN

 

 

 

 

Poetry is both universal and specific. Its rhythms and cadences can tap into something like an original language. An image or sentence might reach deeply inside of you telling you that your understanding of the world is shared with others.

At the same time, poetry can be the most specific of experiences. The music of a poem may require it to be read with its native accent. A set of cultural, geographical or temporal references may lose a reader completely.

In this way, I find Jee Leong Koh’s first collection of poetry, Equal to the Earth, published by Bench Press, particularly interesting in how it will connect with different readers: immigrants and ex-pats, gays and straights, lovers of language and rhyme. As a gay Asian poet, living outside of the country I was born in, I feel a kindred spirit in Koh, while conscious of our differences.

Koh’s use of rhyme and formal poetic structures is one of these differences. An Australian novelist and critic, Ian McFarlane, wrote in the Australian Literary Review (3 Feb 2010): “Until quite recently rhyme was crime and sniffingly discarded from the poetry editor’s slush pile, preferably with a pair of surgical tongs.” But he proposed that “we are disposed to rhythm and rhyme”, noting Nicholson Baker’s notion “that rhyme provides poetry’s true form”.

I note my cultural bias. My Canadian peers and role models most often wrote in free verse charged with conversational rhythm. So, I’m not inclined to rhyme but was impressed with Koh’s experimentation with rhyme and form, and caught myself noting how subtle rhymes could elevate an idea into song, enlivening phrase and sentence (in the poems “Pedestrian” and “Actual Landing”), and matched at times with gentle play and humour I (“Spinoza on Love”, “Thank you, thank you”).

A few poems I thought weaker had a central idea, and rhyme, but not enough internal energy to set them alight. I wondered if the rhyme patterns were constraining the energy of language, stronger ideas and words unable to break free. But perhaps I’m biased as one of my favourite of his poems was rhymeless, an intimate lament:

we both know, my love, who is no longer my love,

we’re standing at the very edge of Long Island

but, no, neither wild nor desolate is the edge.

                                                                                      (“Montauk” p.79)

 

I prefer this voice of Koh’s, when he matches the intensity of what he is feeling with something that reaches for something that is all at once, grand, universal and specific. In a few poems, I detect a depth of emotion that is somehow dampened, almost tossed away so as not to hurt as much. A poem to his father, “What’s Left” has the themes of familial betrayal, neglect, duty and resentment, and yet I noticed more the rhyming structure, or the repetition of the “sigh”, his symbol for his grandfather. Which could be the point: an Asian stoicism rather than a stronger reaction, but the poem still left me flat. Similarly, in “New Year’s Resolution”, the narrator battles loneliness by treating it lightly and the conversational language (“your friends sincere and good-looking, sort of”) lacks charge.

 

I enjoyed the frank, bold narratives of the handful of sex-oriented poems (including “Glass Orgasm”, “Cold Pastoral” and “Chapter Six: Anal Sex) though as a fellow romantic, I worry for a narrator who “mistakes loneliness for love” and is excited by the sound of a man, more than any man he’s met. But lots of us poets are tragic romantics and will sense a kindred spirit in these passages.

What I was most impressed with was the first section of Equal to the Earth, “Hungry Ghosts”, in which the narrator inhabits different men from China’s history who were attracted to other men – it uses Asian imagery and ideas in ways that are not kitsch but instead playful and original and matches it with a voice that crackles with energy.  (“…kings are threaded with assassins, / male favorites, butchers, turtleshell diviners…”; “…the graying calligraphy, / the bamboo ribs bound by a belt of twine and worn / by age and use.” p. 13-14)

At the end of this set of poems, unexpectedly, the narrative shifts to the present-day, where the narrator describes a simple walk and a soon-to-occur visit from his male lover. The speech is natural and truthful and charged all at once, the rhymes subtle; this voice I felt I could listen to for far longer than it lasts. I liked it also because it wasn’t reaching for a big idea or a closing line, and yet it was resonant with meaning – aging, parental acceptance, sexual identity, companionship – and in a way that is compact and perhaps more successful than the seven-part poem “Talk About New York” about a reunion with an old friend from Malaysia. 

Sign me up for the next installment.

Critic John Leonard wrote in Five Bells (Autumn/Winter 2009) that poets “swim in a current of mutual encouragement” and argues for a “climate of debate” which will lead to better poetry and wider readership (p. 18). At the same time, what is exciting about younger and less established poets is a freshness of voice, an energy and enthusiasm; different than the wise, practised voice of established poets, but valuable in their own ways. So, what I’ve aimed for in this review is balance so that my praise for what I very much enjoyed in the book is made more truthful by pointing out what didn’t resonate with me. Though to each his own, I disclaim. 

First books of poetry are often exciting and compelling as they introduce you to a poet’s concerns and give an idea of where a poet will go in his next book. I’ll be interested to see how Koh builds on his strengths: a light touch applied to the right topics, an openness and accessibility, strong feeling and inventive images rendered in original language. Beyond the poems as individual works, I feel a writer who is working hard at his craft, publishing widely, and excited by language.

 

Ashley Capes Reviews “Readings From Wheeling Motel” by Franz Wright, Music by Michael Rozon, Daniel Ahearn

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Readings from Wheeling Motel

by Franz Wright

Produced by Daniel Ahearn, Chris Ahearn

Music by Michael Rozon, with Daniel Ahearn

Riparian Records 2009
Recorded by arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc.

http://readingsfromwheelingmotel.bandcamp.com/

Reviewed by ASHLEY CAPES

A musical collaboration between the US poet Franz Wright and Los Angeles musicians/producers Daniel Ahearn (Ill Lit) and Michael Rozon (Brazzaville, Melvins).
 

When I received Readings from Wheeling Motel, by Pulitzer Prize winning American poet, Franz Wright, I was immediately struck by how convincing Wright was as a reader. He does not rush a single moment, and brings a sense of assuredness to the recording, with his willingness to leave space where space is needed. Having Ahearn travel to the poet’s home in Waltham, MA to record the readings may have added to this, as the studio can be a demanding place, where budgets and schedules often hang over a performer.
The publisher notes that the original music, recorded by Ahearn and Rozon in Los Angeles, “creates a dreamy counterpoint to Wright’s delicate, deliberate lines” and “offers the rare opportunity to experience this world-class poet in a uniquely personal and direct manner.”
I agree. It is a highly personal experience, at times an unnerving one too, both musically and thematically. An extensively self-referential collection of pieces, conviction comes from a willingness to both examine and criticise the self. Even to run across the bruises at times, as in the mercenary tradition of much poetry, Wright tears through his own life and ends up sharing stunning material. “Night Flight Turbulence” is a perfect example of a personal moment becoming shared, through both its interaction with the music and the listener. The recording builds a tight space around the narrator, enhanced by heavy, reverb-drenched atmosphere, courtesy of the piano’s legato phrasing and reversed guitar. Wright’s expression of confinement is made more tangible with a word choice that is both conversational and abstract:
               In the greenly-lit restroom, 
               I looked pretty ill, like 
               a vampire locked in
               a confessional;
               the drug had no effect
               whatsoever, maybe 
               slightly more arctic and fearful.
 
Here and throughout, Wright’s voice is like an anchor, holding everything in place. The music moves around and beneath his raspy tone, never intruding, but instead supporting his imagery and deft use of metaphor and simile. At times the music almost sounds like it chills him, despite being recorded after his reading.
 
Dennis Wilson’s Pacific Ocean Blue seems comparable. Both recordings are musically cool and reflective, often pensive, or simply dark. And both voices are deep, raspy and weathered, but clear (though more so in the case of Wright). And it’s that clarity of voice that’s so frequently mirrored in his poems – “At 54” is a wonderful moment of revelation, where ‘place’ becomes everything:

                            And I can’t wait

               to return to this chair
               in which I am sitting, this
               world, the one where

               each object stands
               for nothing at all but
               its own inexplicable existence.                                                                                                                            

Listening to Wright read his poetry, I found myself at his mercy; I experienced each piece like a movie – knowing so little about what was coming next. It kept me involved in a way that was different to the page. In fact, one of the greatest challenges in writing about Readings from Wheeling Motel, is that I can only show you the words, I can’t let you hear them. And it’s important to feel the way in which the intensity of the poetry is counter-balanced by Wright’s calm, measured reading, the open, unobtrusive music. Now, when I re-read sections of the poems here, the intensity is stronger than the calm. Wright, who has battled alcoholism, addiction and psychiatric illness, is biting when it comes to the limitations of prescription therapy, as with “Paediatric Suicide”, which begins with the line:

                         Being who you are is not a disorder.
               Being unloved is not psychiatric disorder.

 This launches an attack, going well beyond defiance:

               And seeing a psychiatrist for 15 minutes per month

               some subdoormat psychiatrist, writing for just what you
                          need lots more drugs

               to pay his mortgage Lexus lease and child’s future tuition
                          while pondering which wine to have for
                          dinner is not effective

               treatment for friendless and permanent sadness. 

               Child your sick smile is the border of sleep.

The poem is one of the most beautiful and heart-rending of the collection. For as much as it is haunting, brooding and bleak, there is beauty, defiance and strength. Wright’s mix of tenderness and harsh realism weaves its way through so many poems, like “Waltham Catholic Cemetery” or one of the longer pieces, “With a Child”:

                                                 And the words
               for these things are so terribly small;
               and the world of those words                   

               only slightly less mortal
               than this instant of taking your hand,
               of taking care to look both ways, 
               not to squeeze too hard, or be too aware 
               that no such mercy will be proffered     

               by a world that has no need 
               of words, or us.

At times it sounds like Wright is searching for and finding the right words, as if he does this ‘live’ as he reads. This space is used to great effect, such as in the list-like poem “Intake Interview,” where each line is given the room to stand alone:

        Would you compare your education to a disease so rare no one 
                               else has ever had it, or the deliberate extermination
                               of indigenous populations?

The entire recording is sequenced with space in mind. During the poems and between them, there is enough time to feel or think, between one poem and the next. The music, at times quite dramatic, though usually so understated, is transitional between pieces, but also allows the listener room to absorb the poem themselves.

The impressionistic sketches and musical fragments (arranged by a big supporting cast) comprise at the least, piano, pedal steel, nylon acoustic (on the delicate “Out of Delusion,”) electric guitar, wordless vocals. During “Day One”, a simple, hard drumbeat underscores the humour in the piece:

               Good morning, class. Today
               we’re going to be discussing
               the deplorable adventures
               of Franz Wright and his gory flute. 
               Just kidding.

One of the more dissonant pieces of music in the recording is from “Abuse,” which brings a silent film or saloon to mind, with an off-kilter feel, one that is a surprising but not unwelcome contrast with the rest of the collection.

“Bumming a Cigarette” follows and returns to a slow, marching tone, for one of the most harrowing moments as Wright seems to accuse himself of becoming his father, who also suffered with alcoholism and who eventually died after being diagnosed with cancer of the tongue:

               And you can only armour yourself in death-wish for so long, the
               blows are not muffled, it will save you from nothing;
               and the idiot drive to go on, and actually be glad to go on, 
               keeps breaking through, ruining everything, even 
               this last chance for some sort of peace.

The collection does have the feel, at times, of a startling eulogy. Death features large in the collection, both its inevitability and, perhaps, its inability to be explained away by religion (“Everyone, Lord who wakes up in a cell./Everyone Lord who wakes up in the cancer bed.” from “No Answer No Why”). I came to the closing track looking for something tender, more hopeful, and “Wheeling Motel” delivers this. Settling on a reflective moment, it is framed beautifully by piano and a wordless vocal with a gospel, Amazing Grace/Great Gig in the Sky-feel, where Wright closes with an echo, subverting the famous American Civil War poem and personalising the conflict by referencing himself and his father, suggesting an ability to reconcile, to forgive:

Then the moon will rise
like the word reconciliation,
like Walt Whitman examining the tear on a dead face.

It’s a privilege to be introduced to Wright’s work in this manner. Hearing a recording is an experience that many of us will never have.  There are poets from the past whose readings are impossible to record. Contemporary poets may be prohibited, or lack the opportunity. There are so many stumbling blocks between poet and listener. But here, Ahearn, Rozon and Wright tear them down and present the poetry in a way that brings the reader, in Ahearn’s words “disorientation, transcendence, a strange peace.”

 

 

Tim Wright Reviews Pam Brown’s “True Thoughts”

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Drinking Water in a Suburb Called Zetland: Notes on Memory and the City in Some Poems by Pam Brown

True Thoughts

by Pam Brown

Salt Publishing, 2008

ISBN:  9781844715152

Reviewed by TIM WRIGHT

 

 

In a recent discussion of the lyric in Australian poetry on her blog[i], Pam Brown wrote of her poetics that she was interested in ‘the occurrence of ‘the current’’. The current here could be both ‘the contemporary’ or ‘the present moment’, the moment of writing. In her latest collection True Thoughts this interest in the current merges with an ongoing interests in memory and place (particularly the local). The past and present appears often as a duality in the collection, along with others: stillness and movement, inside and outside, this way or that way, here or there. The poems’ mode is kinetic, they proceed by indirection[ii].

 

Brown’s noted critical take on the everyday – and sometimes hyper (and anxious) self-reflexivity – is integrated into the practices and habits around work, leisure, friendships, travel, reading, and writing. The title is plural: ‘thoughts’ as in products; not ‘thought’ as process. The poems are less about the kind of thinking exemplified by Rodin’s Thinker, an absorbed stillness; instead thoughts occur, one after another, amidst and in response to movement, radio, traffic, mobile phones. Thinking takes place in a city, and so the possibilities or potentialities latent within it become part of the thinking process. Subject and object are often captured on the move, going somewhere else. Glimpses of the poet appear – catching a train to work or sitting at a desk to read – alongside and simultaneous with records of various kinds of mental action: observing and noticing, worrying, hesitating, remembering or speculating on conversations with other writers and friends, making a decision.

 

The poems don’t lend themselves to scholarly close reading; they wriggle out from under the microscope; they don’t seem to me to be coded or contained in the way that that method, at some level, implies. They share concerns of memory, and a responsibility to continue thinking politically and humorously in an increasingly fragmented contemporary. About half of the poems are more than three pages long, and move by branching, link-and-node formations: shape mimics thought. I read the poems as a book length work; not quite a sequence, but a collection in which chronology is important. I suspect that a way of reading (or listening) to the poems is required that is more open to distraction – a state the poems themselves are written through – one which could skip across the poems, read them glancingly and let them go out of focus as much as reading lines and words in a sharply focussed way. In a sense this is simply to read in the spirit of the poems themselves. They are not, I think, written as contained aesthetic objects to be regarded. The poems (and their ‘speaker’) proceed by way of indirection, and this is realised in the heightened attention and care given to line breaks – those points of the from which it could ‘go anywhere’ (as one poem says). The anywhere is not fantastic – an escape – but a state of (distracted) openness to possibility which the poems want to maintain, to keep in the air. It is productive to think of them, for a moment, alongside the ‘talk poems’ of the contemporary American poet David Antin. Antin has explained that his style of poem comes from wanting ‘to think about things that are worth thinking about that lead to more thinking[iii]‘.

 

The two opening poems, ‘Existence’ and ‘Amnesiac Recoveries’ are responses to the US war in Afghanistan, and the Iraq war as it proceeded from dreaded possibility to reality in the summer of 2003. JS Harry’s ‘Peter Henry Lepus in ‘Iraq, 2003” (from Not finding Wittgenstein, 2007) and Jennifer Maiden’s George Jeffreys sequence (from Friendly Fire, 2005) are important reference points, being the major Australian poems I know of written in response to the second Iraq war. Where Harry and Maiden use fictional characters to imagine Baghdad, Brown’s response is autobiographical, remaining ‘herself’, in Sydney. In this context the description of a swim in harbour that opens the poem ‘Amnesiac Recoveries[iv]‘, seems luminous, a luxury, when posed against the knowledge of the distant war:

 

            2002

            I get away

                        from the academy

            and                   after breakfast

            dip in the green harbour

                           under sprinkling rain.

 

            I know the war continues.

                 on  tv

                     in the background of the frame

            the investigator yawns.

 

The speaker is both part of, and separated from the unnamed war by a screen. She is, after all (as I am), Australian, a citizen of one of the countries involved in the war, and so, in an obscure sense, involved. I borrow the word from the last lines of John Forbes’ ‘Love Poem’, perhaps the most subtle Australian poem to do with the first Gulf War[v]. The final lines of Forbes’ poem have its speaker watching the televised bombing during the Gulf war of 1991, knowing, ‘ … obscurely, as I go to bed / all this is being staged for me’. Brown’s poem also ‘knows’ the war mediated by a TV screen, but doesn’t stage the same moment of laconic epistemology; it sets the image, moves on to something else.

 

The poem is noteworthy for how it plots different points across the city, passing through three different environments, from the desiccated university to breakfast to the green harbour in three lines. The searching and questioning provoked in Australia by the wars – about what it meant to be a citizen as well as a writer, an artist, or a poet – are explicit in the poem, and haunt the collection. There’s an awareness that there is possibly more at stake now than then, but also that the ideals and lifestyles of the seventies and eighties have largely disappeared, and that certainties about politics and political affiliations have become more complicated and more fragmented. Ken Bolton has noted of this collection that ‘[t]here is a lot of lying down, small rests, boredom defeated—but also, to a degree, a withdrawal from the game, beyond maintaining solidarity with others’ humanity . . .[vi]‘ .  Simultaneously, there is a will to continue, and to continue thinking in the face of what often feels overwhelming; this is apparent in the plural title (‘Amnesiac Recoveries’) which suggests a series of shocks that each bring about a return to awareness (of history, of politics) from a state of amnesia. The poem continues:

 

            that empty-to-the stomach feeling

                as I enter the building

                     to begin

            my twelfth year of toil

 

            I know how to fix everything

              but, obstinate in my resolve,

                                        withdraw.

 

            who here

              would phone Interflora

                         for your funeral

 

There is clearly a self-conscious eye observing the poet’s gloominess in these lines. While moods such as these reoccur in the collection, they’re rarely entirely dark. As much as in earlier collections, Brown’s poems are humorous, and anxious–the James Schuyler quote ‘I order you: RELAX’ is a favourite–as they record the attempts of a person to make sense of the new decade, and a new, disappointing, age brought about by those wars. The poems attempt to register that disappointment, but also to try and unlock keyholes to counter it. At the end of the title poem from his 2003 collection, Kieran Carroll made a distinction between decades when he noted the change from the 80s to the ‘slicker, mentally tougher 90s[vii]‘. These two poems and others in the collection seem to be an attempt to do something similar, to find a word for the first decade of the 2000s, to try to understand what is and what was unique about it. By staying close to the body, by not protecting the poems from the grotty everyday and the ephemeral (the ‘tangled crepe-paper streamers,/napkins, plastic plates/& other picnic junk’ left after Australia Day), and also by stubbornly resisting, most of the time, to ‘get metaphysical’, the poems feel out an attitude for existing politically now, one that is as subject to distraction, mood, and change as a mind and a body are.

 

The first poem in the collection, ‘Existence’ shares many of the concerns of ‘Amnesiac Recoveries’, and could be read as a companion poem. It begins:

 

            from here on in

            if I follow

            the girl in the

                    ‘your tv

                    hates you’

            sweatshirt       as her motorcyclist

            warms his darkly bubbling engine

            ready to blur

            into a field of speed

            it’s probably

            one less path

            to torpor

                            for me

 

~

 

            a dishwasher whirrs above me

            a slab separates us –         water restrictions

                                                                      mean nothing

 

            war

            is

            imminent,

            Sydney goes sailing

 

The imminence of war suggests that both poems were written at around the same time: a Sydney summer with its rain, heat and frangipanis smeared on the footpath. Both poems, too, juxtapose the luxuriance and privilege of water (sailing, sparkling waves, the ‘Rose Bay Afloat’) with the obscured, but still dimly apparent, ‘rest of the world’ that the water separates Australia from. As with most poems in the book, other lives appear only as strangers observed, emails, the trace of a life through the whirr of a neighbour’s dishwasher. As an opening poem it flags some of these themes of the book: Sydney, war, memory, and finding ways to continue.  

 

The anti-war poems are followed by five written during a residency in the Trastevere in Rome. Most of the rest–about two thirds of the collection–seem to take place in or around contemporary Sydney. Memory and the city emerge explicitly as themes in ‘Saxe Blue Sky’ and ‘Train Train’, which detail two Sydney train journeys, one from the leafy eastern suburbs into the city, the other down from the Blue Mountains and past the sprawl of the western suburbs. ‘Saxe Blue Sky’ begins with a train journey to work. One of the things I like about this poem is the particular stretch of train journey it describes. As the train comes out of Kings Cross tunnel the passenger seems to float for a few hundred metres, about half a minute, over a zone of the city which is a crammed mix of the old and the hypermodern. It passes over the housing commission terraces and luxury apartments of Woolloomooloo, the towers along William Street in the distance, the Cahill Expressway, and for a moment beside the Art Gallery and the Domain. Bookended by two tunnels—one into Kings Cross and the other into Martin Place—the experience is highly cinematic down to the jumpcut beginning and the sudden fade to black as the train hits the tunnel. Local landmarks are registered: Brett Whiteley’s ‘burnt match/live match’ sculpture outside the Art Gallery of NSW, a bronze frieze on the gallery wall. Soon the speaker looks away from the train window, down to a set of catalogue cards she will need to go through once she gets to work:

 

            cards detailed with

                                 pencilled handwriting,

                traces of old colleagues

                                                        now moved on.

The process of recording information onto a card by impression becomes analogous here to how memory can become "impressed" in material things, and here patina becomes important to thought over surface smoothness. What stays the same in a city over time? The poem details those things which persist: icons (the Harbour Bridge), identities (Brett Whiteley), official histories (plaques). Yet there is a frustrating weakness of visual memory, and the way it plays out in the experience of living in the city:

                            I remember most of them,

            more,       I remember their memos,

            circulated notes—

                               our names listed,

                           stapled to a corner,

            memo read,  name ticked,    then passed along

                                                      to the next name—

                        pre-email

 

The scripts of these old colleagues produce an encounter that’s placed parallel to those official histories embedded in the city, which flash past but leave little impression. One of the questions asked throughout the book is how to remember while avoiding the stillness, or endless replay of nostalgia (which in this case might be the colonial architecture of The Rocks). Cities change, taking memories with them, and so actively remembering former iterations (taking notes, documenting in some personal, experiential way) is a method of resisting what in ‘Amnesiac Recoveries’ is termed ‘memoricide’ – the bombed Baghdad library. Brown’s poems stay close to the built environment, and pay attention to inscription in all its forms (shops signs, old notes, memos…). Rather than history, it might be more useful to think of Brown’s concern with the materiality of memory in terms of heritage. Heritage as ‘that which we’ve inherited’, or ‘that which we are heir to’, allows a connection to history at the interface with the built environment. The political question then becomes, How is it decided what gets kept? In the poem, the sifting, sorting, chucking-out process that will shortly take place with the old cards could be the architectural model version of an answer: personal archivism.  

 

The poem, ‘Today there is much more heritage than there used to be’, develops this concern while addressing a friend in hospital. The poem moves between several views, the ‘in situ’ view of the speaker, imagined views onto the Harbour, either from Brereton’s house or hospital, to a less inspiring view of a tv from her hospital bed. The poem begins,

 

            built between the wars,

                       acts of social optimism,

               our anachronistic homes—

                          but,    or,    even,    so

                           we live in them,

            sought after charm emblems.

 

            in the block next to mine

                              a gang of workmen

            is hurling the walls

                              and the tea break

                              and the lunch

                                            out the windows,

            bricks and door frames

                             plastic forks and curry packs,

                                           like storm debris,

            hurtling

                   like           broken twigs

                                  across the car park

 

~

 

            a lightning flash

                       interrupts computing—

            I imagine your stormy view

                                  over Elizabeth Bay,   beautiful

                           night-dark,      night-light,

                          small boats tossing and slicing

                                                through the bay

            (how

            do such tiny blinkings

                                                 guide them?)

                         towards Clark Island

            or heading back

                                   to the illuminated city

 

The poem transitions between contrasting scenes (day and night, land and water), blending interior and exterior with the lines ‘a lightning flash / interrupts computing’. It suggests a kind of noir city imaginary that the poems work out of. The poem ends comically, with the poet on her knees waxing the bathroom tiles, and the realisation that ‘a resemblance of heritage’ is ‘as near as we’ll get’.

 

Brown’s poetry might be usefully thought of both in terms of the flâneuse and of the bricoleur, but also of the rag-gatherer, that other nineteenth century Parisian character, collector of what the city dwellers considered of little value. In The Arcades Project, Walter Benjamin quotes Laforgue of Baudelaire, ‘He was the first to write about himself in a moderate confessional manner, and leave off the inspired tone.’ The description is reminiscent of the self-deprecating voice of many of Brown’s poems. The quote continues:

 

            He was the first to speak of Paris from the             point of view of one of her daily             damned (the      lighted gas jets flickering with             the wind of prostitution, the             restaurants, and their air             vents, the hospitals, the gambling, the logs resounding as             they are sawn and then dropped on             the             paved courtyards, and the chimney             corner, and the cats, beds, stockings, drunkards,             and modern perfumes) – all in          a noble, remote and superior             fashion . . . The first also      who accuses himself             rather than appearing             triumphant, who shows his wounds, his laziness,             his             bored uselessness at             the heart of this dedicated workaday century, its strange             decor:             the sad             alcove . . . and to take pleasure in doing so[viii]

 

The ‘Haussmannization’ of old Paris in the nineteenth century, the period when Baudelaire was writing, might be the ‘Meritonization[ix]‘ of Sydney in the twenty-first. There are less smells to encounter, and not so many logs-being-sawn-and-then-dropped to listen to, but a pleasurable ‘bored uselessness’, certainly evident in Brown’s poetry, might be as effective a strategy as it was for Baudelaire. For Brown, the city is a grid for making sense of experience, as well as a mnemonic. The poems map the movement of thought as it occurs in a city space. The spare, pared back lines span outwards seeming to collect details. And while she is attentive to the world outside, she seems to be happy to not let it cohere: questions are permitted to stay unanswered, odd irregularities are often placed in the poem as readymades.

 

Rather than the smoothly flowing motion of the car or bike, the poems move at walking pace, and with the memory of its rhythm, are able to turn around and backtrack. Brian Massumi’s appealing idea of walking as ‘controlled falling’ is a reminder that walking is as much a product of resistance, each step being the arrest of a potential fall, as it is volition. Brown’s writing proceeds, it seems to me, with this necessary resistance, by cutting lines short. One step, then another; one thought, then another. The distractions of a city street are rendered in the short lines and variations in spacing across the page. Brown celebrates the pleasures of distraction, of being able to go ‘in any direction’. At times this distraction resolves into crystalline moments of attention. The first two short poems are from ‘Zennish’, a series of short poems from the earlier collection, 50/50, the third from Little Droppings, a chapbook of out-takes from the collection This World, This Place:

 

 

thirty shades

of mirrored

sunglasses —

I

like the look

of a lucozadey amber

 

~

 

ah,

the little dose

of gamma radiation

I

was given

at the clinic

 

~

 

Drinking water

in a suburb called

Zetland

 

 

There is a singular state of attention present in these poems. Duchamp’s concept of the inframince, or the ‘ultrathin’, provides a useful context for these poems. Some of the well-known examples Duchamp gives are the sound of corduroy pants rubbing against each other, the difference in volume between a freshly washed shirt and a shirt worn for one day, the taste of one’s mouth lingering in exhaled smoke. It is these attenuated feelings, Brown’s poems suggest, that make up an everyday plane of affective experience. There is a resistance to explanation in the three line ‘Zetland’ poem, a trust in language to do the work. We are not told who is in Zetland, or why, or indeed what Zetland is: the name could be a 1920s version of a future city, with its ribbon-like freeway overpasses and hovercrafts. In fact, the name derives from the former name for the Shetland Islands – I discovered this by punching it into Google. It is a suburb in an inner but slightly hidden-away, often overlooked, part of Sydney; rapidly gentrifying. 

 

True Thoughts is populated by screens, junk technology, litter, buildings, freeways and cars, public transport, water (the harbour, the beach, the dishwasher), brand names, and now and then, glimpses or traces (archival, memory traces) of other lives. The poems often alternate between exterior and interior spaces (the interior of a train carriage and the view through the window; the flash of lightning illuminating a study desk sitting at the computer) and this is paralleled to the constantly changing relationship between thought and the outside environment. Brown’s poems, her forms, are ‘true thoughts’, at the level of the nagging ethical worries, as well as the jingle reverberating in a mind interrupting more serious thought, or the overheard conversation. They attempt to remain open to experience in an age of (that potentially optimistic phrase) ‘late capitalism’.



 

[i]          [http://thedeletions.blogspot.com]

[ii]     The phrase is from Edward S. Casey’s chapter title ‘Proceeding to Place by Indirection’ from the book The Fate of

      Place: A Philosophical History, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1997/98

[iii]    ‘A Conversation with David Antin, with host Charles Bernstein and questions from Penn students’, University of Pennsylvania – March 16, 2004 [http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Antin.php]. A fuller quote reads: ‘I have a distaste for the jewel-like work, which I don’t tend to do very often as you can probably agree. I also don’t like it. That is in some sense I’d like to produce an object that’s an action. And it’s an action that leads to actions by others: mental actions or human actions. And on the other hand I don’t want it to be simply talk .. In a certain sense, simple talk that isn’t engaged with trying to figure something out or think something through, dissipates too rapidly for what I want to do, I want to think about things that are worth thinking about that lead to more thinking. I want to do thinking that leads to thinking.’

[iv]                Taken from a longer collaboration with Susan Schultz, housed in the Department of Dislocated Memory, at the     

                     International Corporation of Lost Structures [http://www.icols.org/pages/PB&SS/PB&SS.html]

[v]     I refer to the final poem in Forbes New and Selected Poems (1992), not the poem of the same name from Damaged Glamour (1998).

[vi]    Ken Bolton, from a review of True Thoughts unpublished at the time of writing

[vii]    ‘ The Night I saw Terry Alderman Dancing to Nick Cave at Chasers’, from the collection of the same name, Ginninderra Press, 2003

[viii]   Convolute J, ‘Baudelaire’, The Arcades Project (1999) Harvard University Press, Cambridge, p. 246

[ix]    Meriton is a large construction firm, responsible for many apartment block developments in Sydney.

Natalie Owen-Jones Reviews “Storm and Honey” by Judith Beveridge

Written by mascara on . Posted in Reviews/Essays.

Storm and Honey

by Judith Beveridge

Giramondo Press, 2009

ISBN 9781920882563

http://www.giramondopublishing.com/storm-and-honey

Reviewed by NATALIE OWEN-JONES

 

 

 

 

 

Storm and Honey is Judith Beveridge’s fourth major volume of poetry. Her first two, The Domesticity of Giraffes, and Accidental Grace, established her as one of the finest voices in Australian poetry, and her third, Wolf Notes, gave this status an enigmatic depth and lustre. In many ways Storm and Honey reminds us of what an important book Wolf Notes is. Within this more recent work continues a quality of breath and line and a confidence with subtle states of mind that was first given to us in those poems. More specifically, the idea of writing a sequence through the lens of a fisherman and documenting life on a working trawler continues an interesting theme in her writing. In ‘From the Palace to the Bodhi Tree’ in Wolf Notes, and the ‘Buddha Cycle’ in Accidental Grace, Beveridge also writes from within character. The poetic speaker in the Bodhi Tree cycle is the Bodhisattva, the sequence imaginatively following his journey, physical and mental, from his life as a prince to the moment when his search for enlightenment is about to be fulfilled.  In ‘Buddha Cycle’ it is the monks and laypeople surrounding the Buddha’s life – many of whose stories are drawn from the Pali cannon itself – who speak the poems, representing the Buddha himself as an effective absence, shining at the centre of their experiences.

 

Yet despite the sequence, on first glance, ‘Driftgrounds: Three Fisherman’, marks an abrupt turn in Beveridge’s poetic. Moving a long way from the non-violence and search for ultimate peace of the Buddha cycles, these poems do not temper the brutality of fishing – the suffering, the stench and death that are a part of that life. Her language revels in the harsh, visceral opportunities offered through the exploration of the fishermen’s lives. Its beautiful meditations, however – ‘Morning, up river’, ‘At the Inlet’, for example – do represent fishing’s other side, the contemplative moments offered by a life on water. Driving both of these, at least outwardly very different themes in her work, is the importance of experience and the acknowledgement of the reality of suffering to Beveridge’s poetry. The importance of bodily experience to the life of the mind finds its own expression in poetry and she invites us, in this volume, to think of this expression as refiguring and bringing into focus far away worlds: the fishing life, sea creatures, the minds of others.

 

Experience has a hold on this volume’s poems, in the way its words feel on the tongue and to the eye and this animates more than the violence of trawler life. Her poems range wildly across language through sound and ingenious simile and her playfulness – more acute in this volume than in others – acts in a similar way to the creation of her fisherman and her portraits of other men of the sea. It offers a lens through which to view this other, and ultimately our own, world. The opening poem announces the volume’s fascination with sound as it describes the awful scene of a child’s body being removed from inside a shark:

 

We heard the creaking clutch of the crank

as they drew it up by cable and wheel

and hung it sleek as a hull from the roof.

 

The poem offers a glimpse of the nature of the sequence’s three main characters, the narrator, Davey and Grennan:

 

                                                            The limb’s

            skin had already blanched,  a sight none

            of us could stomach, and we retched,

 

            though Grennan, cool, began cutting off

            the flesh in knots, slashing off the flesh

in strips; and then Davey, flensing and

 

flinching, opened up the stomach and

the steaming bowels.

 

Positioning the narrator as the more sensitive one, the writing moves from nauseating detail to cold fact. Speaking of the gulls overhead, ‘Still they taunt us with their cries’, he says, as ‘Grennan with a tool / took out what was left of the child’ (15). 

 

This first poem sets a shadow of death across the volume. The next, ‘The Trawlers’, speaks more generally about the fishermen’s working life, and introduces writing, language, poetry itself, as another of the sequences most insistent themes:

 

The broken northern cliff face and tidal rips still

            driving across the rocks. The lighthouse on the headland

            like a valve that blew its incandescence decades ago.

            The trawlers are slanting, moving across thick dossiers

            of water, the wind dictating, urgent, demanding

 

            a copybook hand. (16)

 

This is not the only time the speaker describes weather in writing metaphors, nor has a particular focus on time. Beveridge often uses intriguing and quite beautiful constructions where, for example, something is ‘still’ occurring, something else ended a long time ago, and ‘soon’ something else will arise. It is a persistent awareness in her poems that deserves more attention than I can give it here, and I suspect it is tied to her recurring figures of the moon and weather. It opens her poems to endless possibility. The language and poetry metaphors are more specific to this sequence (there are many playful references to Octopuses and their ink) and drive, I think, its intricate inner logic that points not so much to its being made up of poems about fisherman as painting portraits of fisherman-as-poets. The speaker says in ‘Inlet’:

 

            I know my stroke will lose rhythm in the brown        

                        waters of the cove, but now I make

            curved passage across the bay where even Grennan

           

            or Davey on the far-off jetty, their reels spinning

                        like a sudden volley of insects

            cued by the dusk, might, just possibly – when

                        they come into the presence

            of still waters – find something beautiful to say. (23)

 

And after this mention of beautiful speech, the next two poems speak of the other two fisherman, Davey first, then Grennan, in their own adventures towards poetry – in the case of Davey, a percussive adventure in sound: 

 

                                    …I like a reel to sound as if it ground shell grit,

                        I like it to bitch-box its hisses, I like the full

 

                        clack and brattle and not just have it chitter

            like a sorry crab. (‘Tackle’ 24)

 

In ‘The Knot’, Grennan’s tying a knot is like ‘signing a run of verses, / or psalms in the deaf-dumb alphabet’, the narrator marvelling at how ‘hands [that] have felt the cold brutality of the sea / and lugged nets of killing across the shallows, can make / the tiny twists and turns and conjugate beauty’ (26). If these poems, or even the sequence itself, can be thought of as portraits of the fishermen as poets, it would not be surprising to realise that many of the sequence’s other poems, ‘Lingo’, ‘Delancy’, and ‘Weaver’, for example, are also portraits of the characters the fishermen come across at sea. ‘Capricorn’ is another, the final poem of the sequence and, I think, its finest. It reminds me that the book is dedicated to her son, and opens with the metaphor of a lens –something the sequence offers us pervasively, as I mentioned earlier, through its personas and its language:

 

            Through the end of an old Coke bottle he tracks

                        the flight of a petrel until it is tattered by

            sea wind and another blurred mintage of the sun.

                        Along the pier he hears the men with their

            reels, with their currency of damp sand. His rod

                        quivers, weighted not with fish, but with

 

            the names of storms: Harmattan, Vendavales,

                        turbid winds running the vanguard of

            dangerous straits.

 

Do these lenses refigure reality or make it clearer? In tune with childhood, here, it becomes a portal for the imagination: ‘But now the bottle is a horn,’ the speaker says, ‘into / which he pours so much breath’. Closing the sequence with a lovely symmetry by recalling the child of the opening poem, these lines open into the free potential of the mind, where the first closed onto mortality:

 

                                                      Ah, but you know, if

                        you were to take this child’s hand; if you

            were to keep his gaze in yours and wait for

                        each circulation of his breath; if you were

            to watch the pirated scenes of daydreams

                        play out through a windfall of glass, then

 

            you’d see the copper-coloured sun. You’d walk

                        this beach a long time with your thoughts

            trading in weather and wind, the petrels keeping            

pace with the rakish lines of dreams

            sailing in with the clinker-built storms.

                       

This freedom is a condition of a literary imagination, the poem goes on to say. It is its weapon to ward off death, although this manoeuvre reminds us of death’s ubiquity:

 

                                                            No, the world

            would not be a wave repeating its collapse,

 

            but whatever mintage of story a boy can find

                        among fish scales, sand and the common

issuance of wind; a boy who knows nothing

                        of the linkages between storms; nor of

            the men, yet, who log weather’s quick decay

                        onto gauges of abuse; who knows nothing

            about paying for that old voyage toward death. (60-61)

 

 

The last poems, collected under the heading ‘Water Sapphire’, are often rhapsodic, celebrating poetry’s ability to circle and illuminate a topic or thing or word. They are playful meditations on a word’s sound – as in ‘Apaloosa’, on cockatoos and the mosquito. One of this section’s most brilliant poems, ‘The Binoculars’, speaks again of the sea: of sea-birds, and the speaker’s father’s love of watching them and of his friend, Harvey, who fell to his death while doing it. Revisiting the cabinet in which her father locked Harvey’s binoculars, she

 

                                                                             …levelled

them to the back of the room and saw what looked

to be the sky in mauve-grey, sea mist patterns

full of flecks like the birds I could never bring

to view.

 

She remembers then that once she

 

                                    …saw him again clasping Harvey’s

            binoculars between his knees, working the prisms

            and the light-gathering lenses he’d removed back

into place – and slowly sealing into each intricate

chamber as much as he could of Harvey’s ashes. (76-7)

 

It is tempting to read this final image as an overarching metaphor for the volume, but I do not want to simplify its rich mystery. Beveridge’s poetry requires us to ask the question – which crystallises in this particular collection and, moreover, in its figure of the lens – is poetry essentially facing itself, addressing itself and mining the bright core of language to illuminate its hold on us? Or does it face outwards to the world, bring us the world and open our minds to realities we have not yet experienced? The glass of ‘The Aquarium’, the final poem of the book, might be seen as another type of lens, one through which the speaker views so many of those creatures that appeared in ‘Driftgrounds’ as dead, now with wonder at their alien lives:

 

            The weirdest things are the tiny cuttlefish,

            the ones whose translucent, gelatinous faces

                                           are hung with the rippling curtains

            of their feeding tentacles. Their locomotion-frills are wafting too,

                        fine as chiffon.

 

She pulls these creatures close to us and pushes them away with wonderful similes, making them at once familiar and deeply strange. After describing the virtuosic acrobatics of the octopus, with another gesture of symmetry her last image is the shark:

 

            I go back to watch the octopus again whose arms now

            seem to be conducting music to four distinct orchestras.

                        Then it plays with one of the small rings put there for its

                   amusement –

            and in a flash

   as though its were a length of voile or Dacca silk, it draws

all four meters of itself through the ring’s small hole

                        shape-shifting then tightening

             its small face against the glass before it holds the rim

      of the ring again, and it draws itself back through

                        as if into another portal, another hole in space.

 

But even after this, it’s that shark I can’t forget –

         how it’s eyes keep staring, colder than time – how it never

                   stops swimming,

                          how it never closes its mouth. (86)

 

Perhaps speaking of poetry here, perhaps of the terror of death, it is a wonderful image to close a collection that holds the difficult tension between the two.

 

Beveridge’s is a poetry that keeps an exact and beautiful balance, as if she intuits a point of stillness where each line, each poem, comes to be complete. I often think that the heron, which appears so frequently in her work, is something of a symbolic totem bird. Her poems hold themselves open to the possibilities of time, of chance, of the ‘if only’ of the imagination, yet step with a similar delicate surety:

 

            Near the pier another heron is holding its bill over the reeds

 

            as purposeful as a seiner with a marlinspike, before it

jabs then returns to its wire-drawn stance, as if all it must

achieve now is to lift and pull itself into the distance

like sail twine.

 

…

 

And look! how they stand – at last – stilled to perfection. (‘Herons at Dusk’ 80)

 

 

Jenny Lewis

Written by mascara on . Posted in Poetry.

Jenny Lewis is a poet, children’s author, playwright and song writer. Her last collection, Fathom, was published by Oxford Poets/ Carcanet in 2007. She has been commissioned by Pegasus Theatre, Oxford to write a verse drama, After Gilgamesh to be performed in March 2011. She is also working on a linked collection of poetry, Taking Mesopotamia, for which she has received a generous grant from Arts Council South East. She teaches poetry at Oxford University.

                                                                                              

                                                                         Photograph by Frances Kiernan   

 

Maker 

for Pedro Bosch

 

this is the place where broken
things come to rest from their brokenness

they can’t get the taste of terracotta
out of their mouths

they know they came from mud,
only yesterday

they were a substance
to be walked on
 
now their bridles, palms, trunks,
wings hold unexplained shadows
 
the moon
eyes the world from their jagged holes
 
above them, peacocks roost in the trees –
Neem, Arjuna and the Banyan
 
under which Krishna sat
scooping butter
 
the bark’s twisted textures
are ropes going into the earth
 
resting before the spring burst
of growth, green after green
 
reaching for the sky with its
shattering light.

 

 

Silver Oak

 

Instead of heat and light
grey shrouds:
 
each morning a burial
we fight our way out of
 
grevillea robusta –
a sentinel of stillness
seen through muslin –
 
would look at home
snow-covered
 
among the tundra’s herds
and frozen, sea-lapped edges:
 
yet this is India too,
her private winter face
 
cleansed and secretive  
in her dressing table mirror
 
with thoughts of spring
a world turned away from –
 
the make-up and saris,
the razzmatazz of blossom.

 

 

 

 

Aseem Kaul

Written by mascara on . Posted in New Worlds.

Born in New Delhi, Aseem Kaul now lives in Minneapolis, where he is Assistant Professor of Strategy at the University of Minnesota. Aseem’s poems have appeared in The Cortland Review, nthposition, Rhino and Softblow, among others, and a collection of his short fiction, titled études, was published in 2009.

 

 

 

Ghalib

Tonight, you recite Ghalib from memory;
because poetry, like blood, must come from the heart.

Taking a sip from your glass after every couplet,
the scotch rhyming perfectly the melancholy on your tongue.

You cling to nostalgia like an empty mirror,
to the scent of this language that withers like flowers.

You gather pain the way the sky gathers,
pinprick by slow pinprick, the stars.

Somewhere between question and answer
the feeling dissolves. The need to sing becomes

the struggle not to fall. And you arrange
your ruins into one last gesture,

knowing the Beloved will not heed your call,
knowing she will prove false, like God, or the Moon.

***

You write to me from Delhi,
speak of summer blackouts,

of how, disconnected from the machines,
you thought of Ghalib –

the bomb blast of his grief
leaving the city in ruins –

and how the history of loss
could be written on a feather.

When the power returned
you turned the lights off,

lit a candle to see
the darkness a little better,

and still the shadows
were not the same.
 
***

“Madness”, Ghalib writes, “is never without its reasons;
surely there is something that the veil is meant to protect”
 
And I think of all the years we have spent
listening to these ghazals, the verses
 
falling from our lips like pieces of exquisite glass
from broken window frames;
 
shaping our mouths to his sadness,
unbuttoning our collars to let his words stain
 
the rubbed language of our songs.
What have we been hiding from,
 
my friend? What longing is this inside us
that we disguise in a dead man’s clothes?

 

Autumn Cannibalism

It’s a painting about war:
about civil war and the way
hatred makes us all family,
 
the way two wrongs will feed
on each other till they both
taste about the same.
 
So it has to be wrong
that it reminds me of us
eating ice cream in the park
 
that October, reminds
me how you pressed
your lips to mine
 
for one squeezed instant,
how your tongue curled
cold in my mouth,

how I pulled away surprised;
and how, in that moment,
spoon still in hand,
 
you looked good enough to eat.

 

Static

There are nights beyond voices;
nights when all you listen to
is the static on the radio,
its sound of in-betweens;
 
haunted by disturbance,
by the endless galaxy
of daydream whose pipes and whistles
remind you how long it’s been
 
since you danced with a stranger,
or stayed up till dawn
nursing heartbreak
with the volume turned down low.
 
You wanted something more –
a song you knew the words to,
the sound of human speech –
but are content to sit
 
by this fire of crackling frequencies,
the hiss of its sympathy
like the echo of some long-ago
Babel, a clamour of stations
 
that murmurs the air; displacements
you prefer to the silence
they inhabit, if only for the sense
that there is someone else out there.