May 30, 2018 / mascara / 0 Comments
Nadia Rhook is a white settler historian, teacher, and poet, recently moved onto Whadjuk Noongar Boodja, WA. Her research is much inspired by her background in ESL teaching, and in 2016 she curated the City of Melbourne heritage exhibition Moving Tongues: language and migration in 1890s Melbourne. She’s published her poetry in Cordite and Peril Magazine, and is currently writing a book about Asian migration in colonial Melbourne, and researching the history of Vietnamese indentured labour.
The Greeting
a labourer met a merchant and now sense lives in a
capacious wood-split frame
Commercial Bank of [The [ Murder ] Case ] Australasia
right angled souls, the insanity of capital, this
diary lightly conquers that banknote; pens fire, and ink’s
unfurled from grainy words to characters, firm, in silken thrum
Cantonese dances with halycon English and
meanings are unhinged, by pounds, and history’s odd limbs
Jong Ah Siug never shook Lowe Kong Meng’s hand so in this world
triumph translates into the daily timbre, of prison, & Pidgin, as if carved words
flew to be cut by razored ears, as if when
nothing’s level loss is telling stories like they’re only one
two men, clear in open sunlight beyond a grave’s lines and muddy amalgam, deposit
perpendicular pains, & pride, but
even after all tongues are untied
some walls remain more soundproof than others
don’t be fooled; it’s neither competition nor some hapless union
but a greeting, to incense the border’s gilded innocence
Artist statement: ‘The Greeting’ is written in response to the work of Hong Kong-born Australian artist, John Young. ‘The Meeting’ is an embroidery that layers the material history of the Chinese diaspora in 19th Century Victoria, in particular that of two men, a labourer, Jong Ah Siug, and merchant, Lowe Kong Meng.
The Meeting, John Young, 2015. Single thread hand-sewn embroidery 41 x 42 cm Image courtesy of Arc One Gallery, Melbourne
산
when a sound wells from belly to tongue
like water, goaded by neoteric force
choose me, says this word, and your soul may inflate, like
flattened grass, to understanding
산을 갑시다 … 어디? 설악산… 가자
and when you travel from throat to word I look to
the roaring sky and listen for movement, round
in a circle … til I find us by this
tributary of meaning
sounds fly, winged breath round temple rooves
climb … 산 … listen
the river’s bemused. you flow past your syllables, and now
the river laughs … so? it’s your first time with
this word but I’ve heard it all before
tự do
I caught sight of you in District 1, bold, purple, by
the curved façade of Louis Vitton
“tự do”, I said to my friend, recognizing you, even then
in the delicious pause of late morning, between
coffee and … lunch
“tự do”, he said
trimming my elongated consonants
putting the Hà Nội ‘z-’ into my lazy Đà Nẵng ‘y-’
as if in trying to speak “freedom” I might just trap you in the wrong tone
and we’d be stuck browsing these boutique stores together forever
surrounded by silk and denim each pining for our true lovers
“đấu tranh giành tự do”, he said in his smoothest Saigon northern
accent, like this
was a word with status
and
in the middle of our sojourn down a Street named after that old French physician.
between the monosyllables
I heard
now, the fight for freedom’s a war against foreigners’ depraved pronunciation
I heard. Na ơi, my custard apple friend
for the next thirty seconds I’ll fight against your depraved pronunciation
and then I’m done. it’s up to you
to wield an accent
as shield as sword, but whatever you do
start. by listening
I heard
tự do is not a sign, painted on a façade for my tongue’s twisted consumption. it’s
not a fad either. it’s a question mark and
it’s not my job to teach you that the laziest of tongues may twist
but it’s too late
you’d already showed me
the most important roads are lined with tall words, struggle, fashion
May 29, 2018 / mascara / 0 Comments
Ella Jeffery’s poetry, reviews and essays have appeared in Meanjin, Westerly, Cordite, Best Australian Poems and others. She won the Meniscus/CAL Prize for Best Poem, the June Shenfield Poetry Prize and was shortlisted for the Val Vallis Award. She lives in Brisbane and tweets from @JefferyElla
the ferret population of shanghai: some anecdotal evidence
my friend says ferrets
roam the streets
they were released a long time ago
to catch rats or perhaps it was
roaches he says
now they thrive in back alleys and stairwells
the thresholds of people’s lives
he says they’re called yòu
or perhaps it’s māo yòu
and you can see them at night
on sinan lu where dozens of men
are re-cladding the houses
most mornings workers drip
like melting ice from the neocolonial eaves
hanging neon signs in english
the old tenants shuttled
to some outer orbit
i am doubtful
of most of my friend’s stories
and of this loose grip
on language: mine
and his
either way
the rats and roaches are still out there
but some nights riding
home late
I think I see white ferrets
streaming
under the gates
and into those houses
where nobody is allowed to live
Mutianyu in June
Clouds in the west
tinged the freak green of hail.
There was nobody around.
I walked for hours along the wall
and now and then I’d run
into other people in twos or threes.
We nodded at each other in our plastic
raincoats. For ten minutes
I watched a wild donkey
stand in the rain
among the trees below.
Fog pulsed through watchtowers.
Sometimes the steps
were far bigger and further
apart than I am used to.
Sometimes they were so small
and steep I lifted my whole
body on the balls of my feet
and laid my hands
on the rain-slick steps
above and pulled myself upwards,
scraping stone with my knees
and ankles and shins, bones
I thought I had outgrown.
May 29, 2018 / mascara / 0 Comments
Michelle Cahill’s short story collection Letter to Pessoa won the NSW Premier’s Literary Award for New Writing.The Herring Lass is her most recent poetry collection. Her poems have appeared in Poetry Ireland Review, Meanjin, Island, Antipodes, Best Australian Poems and the Forward Book of Poetry, 2018. She co-edited Contemporary Asian Australian Poets with Adam Aitken and Kim Cheng Boey, and Vagabond’s deciBels3 with Dimitra Harvey. With Professor Wenche Ommundsen she was a University of Wollongong conference delegate at Wuhan University’s 2017 ‘China: One Belt, One Road.’
Forbidden City?
Morning is shuttered and we are like dormant fireflies
at the river’s edge, pale sky, the dainty fruit of miniature
orange blossom—say I’m not banished, then block me.
Texting isn’t my dialect tho I want your revolving heart.
And how little I would want to lose the scent of your hair
brushing fingertips with a Princess from the provinces.
Confess I have been using Express VPN; it’s pretty good.
You said Shakira’s ‘Don’t Bother’ wasn’t your type.
You definitely have a love-hate relationship with my body.
The river is a dark filigree in moonlight; the library at
the Pavilion of Literary Profundity has black, watery tiles.
All the other roofs are yellow, but how green is the Prince?
Night vendors of silk-worm cocoons and sea horse kebabs
take cash or WeChat credit, opium poppies blousy the lake.
Jian bing for brekky; soy ‘n egg-smeared coriander flakes.
They crackle, gag, feet bound, legs tied back, the sous-chef
in the galley is masked, serving mussels, steamed oysters.
After thin-wheeled bicycles, pink southern lychees, a court
seals the probate, painted fan, calligraphy of sweet lies.
May 25, 2018 / mascara / 0 Comments
Jee Leong Koh is the author of Steep Tea (Carcanet), named a Best Book of the Year by the UK’s Financial Times, and a Finalist in the 28th Lambda Literary Awards in the USA. He has also published three other books of poems and a book of zuihitsu. Originally from Singapore, he lives in New York City, where heads the literary non-profit Singapore Unbound.
Strongman from Qinshi Huangdi’s Tomb
The head would have given the final expression
like a peacock’s tail feathers, had we not lost it,
and yet the body is too strongly modeled for us
to require a face. Rounded like high cheekbones,
the shoulders weigh two brawny arms, snakes
lashing within, holding what would have been
a great bendy pole, with a colleague, on which
an acrobat would swing and somersault and land.
Driven to the ground but rising from his feet,
the enormous torso, of earth once trampled on
by trumpeting beasts, is not smooth like a smile
but frowns with clear cracks, in large fragments,
about the roof of the barbarous belly, the lines,
opening and closing, emanating from our mouth.
California
Arnie has no more
devoted follower
than Olympus Chan
from Guangzhou.
For at least a year,
between fifteen and
sixteen, he went so
far as to put on
the Austrian accent.
Trained and won
Mr. Universe at age
20, same age as Arnie.
Moved to Hollywood
to be in the movies.
Had his big break
not as Conan, but
Young Confucius,
breaking his opponents’
jaws when they did
not heed what he said.
Grew rich selling
herbal supplements,
grew famous too.
Then the ultimate
test, the gubernatorial
contest, he loved
saying “gubernatorial”
with a Cantonese
twang, which he won
handily against the
El Salvadoran, on the
back of a huge Asian
turnout, and not a few
El Salvadorans, at last
striking gold as Asian
American and universal.
May 25, 2018 / mascara / 0 Comments
Timothy Yu is the author of the poetry collection 100 Chinese Silences, an editor’s selection in the NOS Book Contest from Les Figues Press. He is also the author of three chapbooks: 15 Chinese Silences, Journey to the West, and, with Kristy Odelius, Kiss the Stranger. His writing has appeared in Poetry, The New York Times Magazine, TYPO, and The New Republic. His scholarly work includes Race and the Avant-Garde: Experimental and Asian American Poetry since 1965 (Stanford) and an edited collection, Nests and Strangers: On Asian American Women Poets (Kelsey Street). He is professor of English and Asian American studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA.
Chinese Dream 25
Timothy dredged, half-heartedly, for stories
of the past Timothy, his mute inglorious
present, and his worries,
all the bright heels he stamped— —Paranoia,
Mr. Chan, paranoia. You imagine all!
—Hands off my cabal,
designer fashion. All dressed for the ball
slender & bound Timothy. Mark him please.
Tender him breathless,
and burn at high rate his surplus resentments:
nourish his need. Remake him as our sentiments.
—My Chan, you no speak.
—I cannot forget. I am wasting away.
There is nothing in my dreams. I’m not the girl
who fought and sang.
Everyone loves a liar, a picture unhung,
lashed to the post at bedtime. Nothing stays.
I owe you everything.
Chinese Dream 31
A Calcutta banker instructed me a little in Yoga. I achieved the free lotos position at the 1st try.
—Berryman
Timo Timoson, from Wisconsin,
did a white man play,
in his tweed jacket and a choking necktie
cuttin his teeth on Buddha, soft man-breasts,
and gave his body one yoga twist;
admiring himself he withdrew from his true
‘murican nature an Oriental smile
& posed a lotus.
Timothy & Henry, each other’s impostors,
in the word-kitchen cook a blankface play
for the lacerated stage; the curtain rose
on the foolish chink and his white-chalk knees
Timo Timoson, from Wisconsin,
did a playing white man play
who even more obviously than the still fantastical Asian American
cannot be himself. Others don’t exist,
human beings in general do not exist,
outside his stare.
May 12, 2018 / mascara / 0 Comments
Janet Jiahui Wu is a visual artist and writer of fiction and poetry. She has published in
Voiceworks Literary Magazine,
Cordite Poetry Review and
Rabbit Poetry Journal. She currently resides in Adelaide, South Australia.
Boat A Three-Part Sonata(dedicated to Ania Walwicz)
1 Agitato
boat turning tapping tap foot step few thing way that in a row going
but going relax rope tow hauling freakish noises the body against
the movement the anx ant barks anything land small space little
room small space rainbow sheets supreme holiday caravan react against
tow boar engine going river little space little small evacuate vacuum
space mars how to deliver from here alexander dera dura free react
mars landscape barren fields brown turn parch pelt flattened boats going don’t
want to boat a prison pristine trees pristine hanging blanket on the bed
supreme kiss past the window harbor label willow wire air passing venting
the pristine mooring the dock marina the trees lovely low hanging semaphore
tingle sore little rooms share one and many divide little waves going by
birds past the noises what can you see the supreme holiday on a dream
the stream full of sandbars the room full of waste little light movements
above a certain waist the supreme seven hours a day and i am blanket on
the bed the pristine waste mooring one stop after another the transform
from supreme to supreme big silver line the wave camel hump the leisure
dock forking into river the big divide the little space on a boat the
river of my polish rings my red loving ancestors the musical crowd the
pivotal island shot with birding fireworks the shorebirds the nesting season
the pristine they once wrote of taught the destroyer of destroyed the troy
of sadist joys the heroic phallustine pleasure the predestined royal treats
the beach the couplets lining up with ducklets and blanket on the bed riddled
with the unwanted and going going the boat rowing by itself the captain in
red riddled with ferry knots time by distance and end of bed to pleasure
of the treasure hunt the segment the segregate the sold off bargain returning
with instructions the boat rotate fast and stop the hit and the cordial
talks the disapprove the approbate the singular town and the church no
one goes to the tied up dot with the jewish malemeds the hello goodbye
hello again daisy ditty song for the boat the sung the won the unwanted
alone on the bed dreading the particular singular solace solicitude the
planetary plenitudes the higher and higher the sitting by edge the down
low and unwanted on a bed staked in a fork brushed by the waves the silver
tails of the fish the walkers the admirable the dreading on shore the dreading
on boat the similitude the placidity the shake of salt and pepper on ice
the game of luck won over by the unlucky the green water the velvet waves
the old woman needing the stick an arm a warm offer the shore the old woman
i becoming i am sloping up and down the river trees big and no one loves
2 Calando
swallow nest and pigeon hero rainbow in the bee-eater beak a little bee
the falcon the cliff face the valentine on a columbine tail the limestone
cloud the steady pace the rolling by the setting tide the avalanching myth
my paradise you are yet to convince a little react a little federate a rabbit
scurrying into bush the flying cormorant the xx the sewage pipe the big
tower my pyramids the react the cliff broken edge the mass structure factory
industry pyramid wrecked the tree lice ants the square tail kites the buoy whistling
the steps the ladders the grass the eye on the edge falling over the path of the dark
brown roots the plastic white the powder blue shadows the talks of society
the charged blank-faced snakes the runover the runaway the cast into the
water for bait the bleached white bough the witchcraft agony the tree
needs no one but water and sun so solitary tall crooked mistletoe-ridden the
watery eyes staring out of holes tearing harmony the sun on the sheet the light reading
various ways the water entertains the grey dead branches rotting roots the yellow
green
haste the once was hay country the dry plains burnt with dust the scarlet
fever for the slow swimmer the fast warning for the marital bug jingling jangle
chanting the seven sister stars the harbor reeds the floating rubber ducks
these were life for them a pair and another pair trapped in a celestial
light a room forever brightened with joy boils the resting things in a singing
paradise so soon passed the light blue in the afternoon the honeying girl
with no one to talk to the set up sacrilege spilling into over spilling and
with her pallid cheeks and tangled hair the tapping at window the passing
of a great rocking rings and rings and life in the water is in the deep
and thick and waste is in the thaw all revealed late in the season the sinking
boat goes cruising up and down the river the night cooling the hours wasting
seven hours a day in a car and forty hours on the moving monster on the way up
where to where to devastate the flag of carnage waving rows of carnivals the one after
after the sick and tired look inside the aquarium a certain look and hesitate
boat beckons no one and all birds stay away the high and low casual clothes games
niceties staked upon niceties games night after night and just as wellthe right lesson
at the right time the little space live with own decision the little checkas though in delay another hindrance to the vehicle a life unsurpassed pass
away unnoticed all power vested on the point of a gun aiming at the night
insects and run and run and one mistake is gone by the trail of smoke
thrown into the other side the nice and dainty hare of my dreams
upside down hopping running the afternoon sun the golden glaze the
mellow tanning auction of the barren soul and where have you been the owing
original the feudal kenturky the feud of father cloud and mother cloud the soup
of souls cooking cannot love cannot know cannot wake another day to work cannot
put on face to march row after row and away sway sway roll and unroll wave
and unwave another casual charade for the unthinking ones
3 Appassionato
going on land where do you smile going on land after a while
going on land searching afar going on land to watch the stars
going on land fair is my love going on land smooth as a dove
mooring with the circling kites
mooring by the reeds for the night
May 12, 2018 / mascara / 0 Comments
A.J. Carruthers is an Australian-born experimental poet, literary critic and lecturer in the Australian Studies Centre at SUIBE in Shanghai. He is author of Stave Sightings: Notational Experiments in North American Long Poems, 1961-2011 (Palgrave 2017), a book of literary criticism that examines five North American long poems and their relation to musical structures and musical scores. The first volume of his epic poem, AXIS Book 1: Areal, was published in 2014 (Vagabond). Opus 16 on Tehching Hsieh is a downloadable eBook from Gauss PDF. The EvFL stanzas are intuitive works inspired by the prosodic dissonances of Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven.
EvFL
von
| vain, jadeworsted, giantesque-bedizzened Sophisticated sponge 1
– assembles Distortion serenely ugliness
– noise realises quiet
– quailing bluster in accord ― pillory’ Prints
– unrelated parade parapluice at Bernice
– in shrill quiverbolt, in inapt
– sagacity, sweat shàpe sweeter, snéer suu ― suu ― shooo ― shooo ―
– hártlesse śhearlets go bough, bushì, enskied the skeńeid
– engineer tradition inside crudity, vulgarian flippancy,
– dollarheap possessing sillilý-educated fatigue throughóut unvanquished
| victim TOADKING ! HISSING ――
– untrained Ulysses,’
– logically unhampered selection from únreasoning,
– goal-God’s passionate-jellymass-development, fídgety, in
– aristocratic sunfishing, boisterous, of imitation,
– rinjehöhrts ― As damnation, tender-tissues-enticing ―
–
–
–
–
| void call pallor
– of hídden swish, folgendes
– ihn
– demands
–
–
–
–
–
–
| vulgarian engines. Polopony brilliancy bluff ― scíence ― stagegiant
– ihn houses
– consciencelessness-centenarygarlanding-repugnance-arena-Poem (!) naughty circus
– twindles effective díctionary
– rest, Harry,
– on śtrength ―
– laughter, heartbreaking, emotional-Śubconscious Germans
– aloft in cloth
–
–
| ornate águe 2
– begán Unflèxed for me
– sabelfir up pálace Through ―
– contained approach Round fámishing; to púlse
– expectant grounds Array! shy wings aflow
– noon-demon-things directed Bĺooddrop śense
– ever grimace sćarlet banning sex
–
–
–
| on clamour:
– denseness caution ― eckshishtenschen ―
– escape amúck! receives
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
| off
– aquiver never
– keeping Rackingly
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
| orgasmlitré lifeworks ― Transition LifeLethe: fliest: balloon, balloon-afternoon
– poolstrung pinning thrálls at durst, mockbat’s spectral bright
– a plenipotent smile
– lone grey Gay Finessen scheel, weckWhat ― that? ― expectation ― preservation ―
– tücke
– inexuberant incessancy Fucks Jehovah; disappears unplumped Beurgrunst thine Thereupon
– suck-grave-smugness, as ẃell did ẃar attire
– sanitation thunder! society! toilet
– uTmost gŕandeur-meddles-magnitude, ćostly-chiseled Dinning,
– electric-ego language
| neurasthenic Moon, fastidious ẃorld 3
– immured
– late By dúll October’s-sober-dynamic Radiance. Matter
– effects Combústion There, but Gaunt-casts-Chárs ― désolate ― Uptorn ―
– scull loom Betwixt ―
– hatepale Cortège is treshed with Tilt, Blacknoozzled in Azure
– ojé Onto ojé, Orkm O Ojombe space!
– rests redéemer Flux-immense ―
– essence dim ― maintenance obsćure ― loamfragrantly down grey ―
–
| nightbrimmed earthcrucibles, earthtesticle immortal that:
– on Elsius Poke-Pőntius mortale
– noise, Culture:
– exiled ultramundanity,― Dreadnaught durlurvm pornèojaculore ás deed
– no far echo śpangled fŕom that juggler
– effigy-distinguished flea! off tiný-Exit-farce ― snookums’romping
– shade beflitt-spume-studded-filigree, ― finstruck-sensed ― unmánnerly ――
– strays thee: Music.
–
–
| necessity our Glossgreen Praise: Dappled Śulphur Face.
– ja
– revel
– illustrator ― by haloflavour ― mellow soothing Velvetune
– snotty-ripe
– tinwipe rubberwhistlebreak! For seen’s-Saint-strung-Bologna, Ghingha ―
– rainbow Jarman biding blue
– elevatet “Gottriese” ― hailes Hight and ćannot pike
–
–
| navel śense as Strasse,
– novembertag Mefí
– jánuaŕy nædness dámhc paẃer
– assumptiv Ĺghting ― ony tánl cĺamers hunes ――
– recreatet scapel ― rýthmic fĺippanccy aharth ―
– recreatet wizzardry ― lauŕeld Ceaśar
– recreatet violńt Héartrythm ― VERMILION “Wetterleuchte”
– elevátet, exaltet, am íss Befĺatterd ― mhyrrstuffed ― SEATALEHostilLacheule ―
–
–
These arose from free inspiration of rhythms out of EvFL ‘The Baroness’ Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven the German dadaist & are dedicated to her memory
February 28, 2018 / mascara / 0 Comments
Eunice Andrada is a Filipina poet, journalist, lyricist and teaching artist based in Sydney. Featured in the Guardian, CNN International, ABC News and other media, she has performed her poetry in diverse international stages, from the Sydney Opera House and the deserts of Alice Springs to the United Nations Climate Negotiations in Paris. During a residency in Canada’s prestigious Banff Centre, she collaborated with award-winning jazz musician and Cirque du Soleil vocalist Malika Tirolien. She has also shared her verses with celebrated composer Andrée Greenwell for the choral project Listen to Me. Eunice co-produced and curated Harana, a series of poetry tours led by Filipina-Australians in response to the Passion and Procession exhibition in the Art Gallery of NSW. Her poems have appeared in Peril, Verity La, Voiceworks, and Deep Water Literary Review, amongst other publications. She was awarded the John Marsden & Hachette Australia Poetry Prize in 2014. In 2018, the Amundsen-Scott Station in the South Pole of Antarctica will feature her poetry in a special exhibition on climate change. Flood Damages (Giramondo, 2018) is her first book of poetry.
autopsy
Ma loads her gun with aratelis berries
shoots at Noy till the wildfruit explode
against his hair, then keeps shooting.
Syrup and rind spray against
their too-small shirts,
curl into the webs of their toes.
It is just after siesta and their backs
have been clapped with talcum powder.
The air is overripe
everything bruised and liable
to burst at the slightest touch.
Point of sale.
When dark begins to pour
around their laughter,
they abandon the wreaths of mosquitoes
that call them holy.
Splotches of juice blacken the soil,
punctuating the walk
to the dinner table.
In that festering summer, Ma learns
the futility of sweetness.
Ma is at work in another continent
when a dictator is buried in the Heroes Cemetery.
State-sanctioned killings begin
in her hometown. Twenty-six shots
to the head, chest, thighs
of two men.
I complain about the weather here,
how the cold leaves my knuckles parched.
Ma points to the fruit she bought over
the weekend, tells me I must eat.
February 28, 2018 / mascara / 0 Comments
Elif Sezen, born in Melbourne in 1981, grew up both here and in Izmir, Western Turkey. She settled in Melbourne in 2007. Also an interdisciplinary visual artist, she writes original poetry in English and in Turkish. In 2014 she published her Turkish translation of Ilya Kaminsky’s acclaimed book Dancing in Odessa; her own first collection of experimental short stories in Turkish, Gece Düşüşü (‘Fall.Night.’), was published in 2012. Elif’s collection of poems Universal Mother was recently published by Gloria SMH Press, and she also published a chapbook The Dervish with Wings early 2017. She holds a PhD in Fine Arts from Monash University. www.elifsezen.com
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
1 Awareness
Now that I am tired
I must open up inwardly like a lotus blossom
yes, I must open my paper-like lids
towards the benign feature of absence
for I will encounter her, in the very bottom:
that archetypal mystic, resembling my mother
by her glance perforating the silvered smoke
my small self will pass away
because I am tired
because fatigue is a lovely trap made to
save my body from its old cage
I learn to become still, yet
teleport simultaneously everywhere
I get rid of the worldly clock
losing beguiling sleep
I become a voluntary mute
so I can speak for them
They
surrender their souls
wrapped with flesh and blood and breath
back to where they came from
On the lands reigned by power issues
and tasteless hierarchy, they choose
the most desert-like spot
because a desert is a home for
repentance
The anima mundi is saved here
in discovering elements of
water, fire, air, earth and ether
through the heart’s eye,
once again
A lament is sung here,
one which only their forefathers can
hear. So each grief can be freed
like a crumbling piece of bread
for the animal-smile hanging
on the corner of the wall
is my primitive self whom I once
ignored
this is a new way of loving one’s self
For I am fatigued
and my fatigue will explode
like fireworks
upon you
2 Swans
Swans were drifting away on the lake
like forgotten desires, and we were
preparing ourselves for an
ordinary day
3 Metaphysics
Who said angels don’t exist?
O angels!
They are hidden in the elixir
of infinity that clears the conscience
of the unspoken
they light the soul-flame in its essence
they secretly orchestrate the flight of
glowworms, electrifying
and dying away towards the East
and towards the West
Whatever East and West means,
this is no secret:
direction does not exist the way we know it
direction is dimensional, not linear
This is no secret:
dying holds you back
not the way you know it
this time keep your angel by your side
and set off on your journey once again
4 The one without an answer
His papyraceous solitude
flows from the tower of innocence
to the lower planes of the cosmos
tickets tucked in the hands of
the one without an answer
5 The phenomenology of chronic pain
This Aria has no beginning, no end
whereas in the beginning there was the sound
the sound of Love dividing into bits
in between the matter and soul
Over time, the sound trans-mutated into
moans, arising from hidden wars
and declared wars
Yet today, right here, it
vibrates through the nerve-ends
of a young body
La Minor impatience
Do black humor
CRESCENDO the pain is so glorious here
First, talk to the pain
Dear pain, what do you want from me?
caress that pain, love it
surrender it to the whole
recycle it
and never forget,
suffering and not becoming monstrous
is a privilege
6 Hope
Close. Close your eyelids
to this landscape
forasmuch as this landscape
— preventing you from being you
once kept you alive
now it rather destroys
You were saying that this is
the memory of the future
you were rambling about a re-birth
in this future
for you were exceedingly dead
nothingness was tinkling after every death
O Rose-faced child,
the eagle
passing by the Pacific tangentially,
pure iron,
O well of meanings!
You must be empty while you hope,
for what already belongs to you is ready
to come back to you
“For to its possessor is all possession well concealed,
and of all treasure– pits one’s own is last excavated
— so causeth the spirit of gravity”
7 Flying
Forgiveness is what’s necessary to fly
also purification.
Even purifying from the desire of flying
yet a pair of wings is enough for most,
to fly.
8 Homecoming
Istanbul Airport is the doorway of my
time tunnel. No talking!
Act like nothing happened
hereby I discovered the reason
for the lack of bird-chirp
that others dismiss
because I am a bird too
I too forget the necessity
of flight
in all directions of the
forbidden atmosphere of mystery,
simultaneously
‘We must declare our indestructible
innocence’, grumbles my mum
her eyes staring towards the
beyond-horizons
The birds pollute the new President’s sky.
A deaf child disappears from sight
in the alley, after listening to the song
which only he can hear
I call him from behind, with no luck
and find myself in
Melbourne again, inevitably
I chop and add mangos into
my meals again
I forget the malevolence of a
suppressed father image again
I forget my most favorite scent,
jasmine
how holy this forgetting is, I know
for it will pull me back to that doorway
for I’ll want to go back home again,
home without geography
without footsteps
how sweet is my abyss.
No memory of fatigue.
I’ll again make merry.
9 One more century
In every cross-section of the secondary mornings
there lies a magic
the winking sun, resembling archaic
portraits of women
make each body solve one more mystery
so that one more century passes.
REFERENCES
The final three lines of the section ‘Hope’ are from Friedrich Nietzsche. Thus Spake Zarathustra, trans. Thomas Common, Wordsworth Editions, 1997, p.188
February 12, 2018 / mascara / 0 Comments
Roisin Kelly is an Irish writer who was born in Belfast and raised in Leitrim. After a year as a handweaver on a remote island in Mayo and a Masters in Writing at National University of Ireland, Galway, she now calls Cork City home. Her chapbook Rapture (Southword Editions in 2016) was reviewed by The Irish Times as ‘fresh, sensuous and direct,’ while Poetry Ireland Review described her as ‘unafraid of sentiment…a master of endings.’ Publications in which her poetry has appeared include POETRY, The Stinging Fly, Lighthouse, and Winter Papers Volume 3 (ed. Kevin Barry and Olivia Goldsmith). In 2017 she won the Fish Poetry Prize. www.roisinkelly.com
Mar-a-Lago
The water is rising again
though it hasn’t rained here for months.
The bayou is coming to the door
of her house, her white colonial house
where she rocks on the porch.
She welcomes the bayou.
The bayou remembers
in the way all swamps remember:
preserving past centuries
like a jam of clotted green memories.
The woman’s dress is ruffled lemon cloth,
a pale froth at her black throat.
The sight of her would put
a thirst on you, old man, as you work
on the sugar plantation. But you
will not drink: she has a sweet tooth
having known until now only bitter.
The sun climbs higher
and higher, a golden elevator
to heaven, as she rocks
on the distant porch. In her lap,
a cat sleeping like a gun
on which she rests a ringed hand.
Silver gleam on fur. Later,
when the sun burns down to amber,
she walks to the water’s edge
and climbs onto an alligator.
Gliding down the swamp’s slow river,
she has nowhere in particular to go.
The dark braid hanging on her back
reminds you suddenly
of that sycamore with its noosey rope
through which you once saw the low
sun like a ruby, as if the earth
was begging you to marry it.
If only you had accepted then,
promising to love its children
as your own. Now you are the one
who has been made to kneel
and look, your hands are bleeding.
Ophelia
We came to meet you, Ophelia.
They said we were reckless, driving down from the city
to that little house in the west.
But we were five women who had nothing
if not each other, and have faced far worse things
than your unrest.
On the way we passed sandbags already slung
by the road, long pumps trailing from streams
while the radio said status red,
status red, and on our phones
all of Ireland a rainbow grid. And us burrowing
straight for the dark violet heart
of things, the sky turning green as a bottle.
A strange light over the sea. The air like a balm.
Water folding itself over, settling to glass.
And in the morning we woke to you everywhere.
In the attic, the water tank still gurgled
the house’s quiet song
as if a circle of livid trees did not surround us,
as if that low growl rising from the earth
held no fear for us.
Lighting the fire, lighting a joint.
The slither of flames and gentle scrape
of the grinder, turning like a wheel.
The lights in the house all dimming and
coming back. And coming back, and coming back.
As fishing boats drawn up on shingle
would be returned from land, as blue lamps
would re-illuminate the virgin’s shrine.
We watched leaves swirl
on the patio, until there were no leaves.
We watched the trees bend and almost break
until the windows were crusted with salt.
Make the world new for us again, Ophelia,
who refuse to light cigarettes from a candle
for the sake of a sailor’s soul—
despite what we have borne
at the hands of sailors. Oh tropical storm.
This is no country of palm trees and flower-
filled ditches, but it is the only land we know.
Women who dream of the impossible,
our roots grow deep.