Louise McKenna

November 14, 2012 / mascara / 0 Comments

Louise McKenna was born in the UK where she completed a joint honours degree in English Literature and French.  Her first poetry collection was A Lesson in Being Mortal (Wakefield Press 2010).  She is co-editor of Flying Kites, the Friendly Street Reader 36, (Wakefield Press 2012).  Her work has appeared in Poetrix and Eureka Street.  Her work also features in Light and Glorie, an anthology of South Australian poetry forthcoming from Pantaenus.

With a rush of water

he reels the fish in,
light glancing off 

the tessellation of mirrors
on its wet piscine skin. 

In a flash he glimpses his son
writhing in a shawl of amnion, 

his wife begging for oxygen
in her river of blood. 

He unhooks the fish’s pleading mouth,
spills it over the bank 

where the current swallows it
like a bolus of grief. 

Beneath the meniscus
of his breathing world 

the barb still hangs,
trails the air.

A Walk in the Post Natal Woods

A thatch of branches and fir cones
drains the sky, sieves nuggets of light. 

In this moth-silent twilight
mushrooms flourish, 

feeding on shadow.
Or blackberries, 

sticky as blood clots.
I must carry my baby 

from this bed of stone
with its lichen and moss, 

its graveyard patinas.
Something malevolent 

waits deep in the bole
of that tree. 

I’ve heard these woods
are full of bears and witches. 

I’m an easy target—
Gretel without Hansel 

looking for exits
that appear and vanish 

like holograms I tell the midwife.
In her eyes I see her shaking her head.

“With A Rush of Water“, was published in the Friendly Street anthology

Lyn Hatherly

November 14, 2012 / mascara / 0 Comments

Lyn Hatherly spends much of her time doing something about writing: editing, publishing, writing, and teaching. Some writers have been working with her – as members of The Writing Zone club – since 1997. Currently, apart from teaching writing and mentoring other writers, she’s one of the managing editors of the new Five Islands Press. In the past she was one of the founding board members of Australia Poetry, editor of Poetry Monash and the Medal Poets Series. In between lecturing in North Queensland Lyn set off in her small green car on a Writer on Wheels tour funded by the Regional Writing Fund. She also acted as poetry editor for LiNQ. Lyn has three published books: Acts of Abrasion (Five Islands Press 2006) Sappho’s Sweetbitter Songs (Routledge 1996) Songs of Silence (Medal Poets 1994). She contributes poetry and reviews to journals and anthologies and has won several awards. At the moment, after much house and garden building, Lyn is busy with a new book about creating a garden in the natural Australian style.

Shearwaters

It’s a miracle the way they home
every evening, braids of light from the city
to the burbs and boroughs
dark-suited parents in singles or pairs
swooping in with the day’s bacon or fish
dreaming, while halted, of the snug rooms
the glad cries of their young.
From crowded arterials they separate
gem-like threads shine up and down grey dales.
Who could believe they’d each find
that certain opening, could zoom at speed
into their own welcome. 

By February Shearwaters have nested
in earthen burrows, each parent sitting
alternate weeks sharing their warmth
with the young as they swell in curved shells.
The other floats, dives for dinner with the flock
flies unerringly home, feathered beats
matching the clouds, shape-shadowing the sea.
Each plunges straight and fast into one entrance
among thousands, each, to my eyes
exactly alike. Babies in their fluffy suits
squeal with pleasure before the family
settles in their dim cosy nest.

Flexible bones

you slip from me
slick with the fluids of ingress
and egress
my labia refold like petals
when the world turns from the sun
I think how part of you
sleeping now against my thigh
is solid brawn yet baby-skin soft 

you don’t know
in months a child will take its leave
the way you have left
my very bones spreading
almost dislocating
hormones unsettling them
as our child moves outwards
and onward 

you can’t remember
how a pelvis bent as you birthed
so you fit that thin canal
how fontanelles    those pliant spots
flexed your skull
where spaces lingered
where skin stretched
and revealed your soul 

you didn’t see the head
of our first child    pointed
as a pixie as she squeezed
into life
only love could melt bones
this way    then fuse
them for a lifetime

Mani Rao

November 9, 2012 / mascara / 0 Comments

Jakob Ziguras

November 9, 2012 / mascara / 0 Comments

Jakob Ziguras lives in the Blue Mountains, near Sydney. His poetry has been published in Meanjin, Australian Poetry Journal, Literature and Aesthetics, and Measure: A Review of Formal Poetry. He was shortlisted for the Newcastle Poetry Prize in 2011 and 2012, and won the 2011 Harri Jones Memorial Prize. He holds a PhD in philosophy from the University of Sydney.

Pygmalion

Heifers with gilded horns no longer part before the axe,
in celebration of the rites of Venus; these days no
mythical obstruction dulls authentic pain, her hidden
                                                                               face.

Art always seemed to offer permanence surer than
the fading skin. But I am tired of scraping at a rock
to find the girl within. Here in my garden, beside a pine
                                                                                  tree

skirted by shadow, a youthful form burgeons in alabaster.
Caught in a state of grace, she grasps after the fluency
of air surrounding her entombed appeal. A straying
                                                                              breeze
 
whistles through her fluted curls. Beauty that cannot dance
or kiss. It scares me suddenly, to see my need transformed
into this lissom milk, compacted hard enough to grind the
                                                                                    seed
of dreams; holding my life between her glowing thighs.

Tiffany Tsao

November 6, 2012 / mascara / 0 Comments

Tiffany Tsao grew up in Singapore and Indonesia, has spent time in the UK and US, and now resides in Sydney, Australia. She earned her PhD from UC-Berkeley in May 2009 and is a currently a lecturer in English at the University of Newcastle, Australia. In addition to writing fiction and poetry, she publishes on English and Indonesian literature. She keeps a blog at http://tiffanytsao.com

The Sprig

The man in the photo is a green shoot of a man
a slim-waisted sprig
a pocket-watch spring
with ears like the wings of a jumbo jet.
He’ll take off and you better catch on. 

The shades of white and grey can’t hide
his technicolour visions.
Through the creased paper protrudes
a jaunty ambition swelling by the second. 

I think his rakish moustache just sprouted another hair.

I know how he’ll unfurl.
He will build empires.
He will populate the earth.
He will feed multitudes.
He will shower the land with dollar bills.
Then: a modest monument, a humble knighthood,
a self-commissioned portrait hanging in the hallway. 

But let’s keep this a secret
or he’ll never get over himself.

Jas Shenstone

November 5, 2012 / mascara / 0 Comments

Jas writes short fiction, poetry, plays and has just finished her second novel. Her stories have appeared in various journals, including Verity La where she now reads submissions. She lives in Fremantle with her partner and dog.

String

I want to stretch my life onto a long piece of string, connected to nothing at either end. Every moment which has meant something will be cut and tied back together. I cut the string to signal the heart stopping, I tie it back together to show I am still alive. I have to cut it several times, here for when I realised your beauty, and here again when I realised my love. I’ll cut it when you come back to me, just like I did when you left.

The lesson of love and cigarettes

You tried to teach me how to roll a cigarette; I roll my own now with such ease that I forget it was you who taught me and only think of it once five years later. I remember sitting on your balcony, which we peered over in silent agony waiting for your girlfriend to arrive. You taught me ill-fated love. You taught me to make you gin and tonic while you begged your mind for any excuse to ask me to leave, and found none, and so I stayed and brought you the gin you drank so well. You taught me the game of love, the notion of winning and losing, and you were my first loss. You taught me secrets, how to keep them and how to confess them at the wrong time. You taught me to swallow love and burn desire. You taught me the power of a door—once closed—a lover can never enter. You tried to teach me how to roll a cigarette. I roll my own now and think of you, but just this once and not again for another five years.

Winter

Suddenly the night air
laid down its arms
and allowed the cold to take over.  
And as we entered the street
we were struck with the unmoving chill
that stood waiting on the pavement
and outside windows.
Our bodies shrivelled like leaves
and we caught our breath warm in our throats.
At your house the cold was forgotten.
The frosted street lamps,
the wet grass,
our frozen breath
—forgotten.

Diane Sahms-Guarnieri

November 5, 2012 / mascara / 0 Comments

DianeSahms-Guarnieri is currently Poetry Editor of The Fox Chase Review, and co-curates The Fox Chase Reading Series. Her first full length collection of poetry, Images of Being, (StoneGarden.net publishing) was released October 2011. You can visit her at http://www.dianesahms-guarnieri.com/

Aluminum

Unnoticed as flowers dying
or slugs crawling 

they pass as divers into liquid night
mysterious as the sick yellow glow 

of hazy streetlights, using a perfect
stream of blue laser light to shine into 

a line of curbside recycling bins.
They mine aluminum. 

It’s faint rattle wakes me
like raccoons stirring inside dumpsters.

From the distance of my bedroom window
they are of small statue; dressed in darkness

a mismatched pair: jack of spades: queen of clubs
placing each can into bundles

of plastic handled bags to muffle the sound
filling their stolen shopping carts

rolling out of sight.

John Tranter

November 5, 2012 / mascara / 0 Comments

 John Tranter is Australia’s most highly-awarded poet. His book Urban Myths: 210 Poems: New and Selected (2006) won four major state awards, and his latest book, Starlight: 150 Poems (2010), won the Melbourne Age Book of the Year poetry award and the Queensland Premier’s Award for Poetry. He received a Doctorate of Creative Arts from the University of Wollongong and is an Honorary Associate in the University of Sydney School of Letters, Arts and Media and an honorary fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. He has given more than a hundred readings and talks in various cities around the world. He has published more than twenty collections of verse, and has edited six anthologies, including The Penguin Book of Modern Australian Poetry (with Philip Mead) which was a standard text for twenty years. He founded the free Internet magazine Jacket in 1997 and granted it to the University of Pennsylvania in 2010, he is the founder of the Australian Poetry Library at http://poetrylibrary.edu.au/ which publishes over 40,000 Australian poems online, and he has a Journal at johntranter.net, a regular Commentary page at https://jacket2.org/commentary/john-tranter and a vast homepage at johntranter.com.

Photogaph: John Tranter, Cambridge, 2001, by Karlien van den Beukel

Poem Beginning with a Line by Kenneth Koch

This Connecticut landscape would have pleased Vermeer:
The pearly light that photographs the town,
The autumn blessing and the bitter cheer
of winter close behind, with frosty crown.
The weekender lies abandoned for the week,
the den and sunroom vacant. On a couch,
the New Yorker open at a page that speaks
of Aquascutum, Harris Tweed and scotch.   

O Aquascutum, shield me from the blast,
And Harris Tweed, protect me from the cold.
As for scotch, let’s leave it till the last
To warm my aching bones as I grow old.
     Vermeer, to please his mistress, heard her sighs,
     And painted pretty landscapes full of lies.

Another Poem Beginning with a Line by Kenneth Koch

This Connecticut landscape would have pleased Vermeer —
The trash, the pickup truck, the cans of beer —
If only Vermeer hadn’t been such a shit.
Oh well, it’s hard for an artist to paint a hit — 
To make the cut, to climb the greasy grade,
To make a real impression on the trade —
It’s really hard, when you’re totally pissed.
It isn’t easy, when you’ve slit your wrist. 

So fuck Connecticut and fuck Vermeer —
Who is this Dutchman with his can of cheer?
I’d rather look at Guston, or some Pollocks —
Who cares if the theory’s mostly bollocks?
     The landscape is really just a frame
     For something that just sat there all the same.

Ainslee Meredith

November 5, 2012 / mascara / 0 Comments

Ainslee Meredith is a poet, editor and student from Melbourne. Her poetry has been published in various places, including Going Down Swinging, Southerly, harvest, and Voiceworks. In 2011, she won the John Marden Prize for Young Australian Writers (Poetry). Her first collection will be published by Express Media and Australian Poetry in 2013.

Fallen Woman 

The clearest night is still unlit
when she calls, so closely,
on the telephone nobody watched;

saltwater and snow-water
fire-break the causeway, send
patina torches up

like false churches. The dream
is an antelope
hit to the side of the road

by a car going to swamp
for fuel. A way to ascension, this
hold on my head you have even as 

I walk from South Hero
to your hotel on the game
road, forging breaths 

solid as oncoming eyes.
Anna: a man followed me
because I was alone and lost 

my right to choose between men,
or to not choose at all.
But the tide is low:

I am clear to cross
with my hands in my pockets,
bent over under the full moon.

Mauvais livres

Once there was a girl and she
was a ladder
inside a grandfather clock.
On her spine
a bookplate read À L’INDEX
as in ‘Brother Léon forbids this one.’
She had a date in the grand library,
but walking down Saint-Denis
the sea shone through her
brass escapement, its words
of surety: Messrs      London      c.   

She could stand all night
on a graveyard shift 

outside the Cinéma ’quoise,
unfaithful letters in
dead-cold hands, defining
those spent images – a risen
mass, clockwise, a lost
war, 5 a.m. doorstep, a child
born to a woman and a bear,
cusped sleep. After all, the librarian 

won, hid her in the inner pocket
of his wooden overcoat. Like that,
a pillowcase for quiet hands.

Grace V.S. Chin

November 5, 2012 / mascara / 0 Comments

Grace V. S. Chin, a former Malaysian journalist, holds a PhD in English Literature from the University of Hong Kong. She currently teaches English Literature and Drama Studies at the University of Brunei Darussalam. Her poems have been published in Hong Kong U Writing: An Anthology, Sweat & The City: Stories and Poems from the Hong Kong Workplace, and Cha: An Asian Literary Journal.

Patchwork

In History class, I sat with my eyes
closed, listening, to the drone
of the teacher’s voice, each word
losing its way in the drowsy
afternoon heat. A fu-
fuzzy-faced boy entered
my daymare, his disjointed arms
reached out, jarring me
into wakefulness. 

“Why,” he asked
in plaintive tones,
“you cannot speak
Mandarin-ah? It’s your
Mother Tongue.” 

Groggy and stunned, I groped
in wavering Cantonese, voice strained
with explanations, syllables leaking
with every translated English word. 

How
do I describe
my patchwork
self? I speak
Cantonese at
home, dream,
think and talk
English
with friends, learn
to read
and write Malay
at school. 

How
do I  sift      
these jumbled-up
tongues, as delicious
as rojak, separate one
from the other, and you lose
their precious taste. 

That afternoon, his question rang
in my head, and only the branch                                           
screeetch-scratching
the window pane outside
spoke for me.

Conversations with my dead mother

Conversations with my dead mother are rare
I should think
but she keeps coming to me
when I am quiet and pliant
in my sleep. It’s not fair,
I cry, hearing the slush
of heavy water in my bones.  

“You don’t eat enough,” she declares
each time we meet. As if stuffing face
would help ease my pangs, or take away
the silted memories. She sits
with legs crossed on the kitchen
stove, a fat female Buddha
with Mona Lisa’s smile, grandly waving
her spatula like a wand, granting me wishes
that never came true for her. 

She spent her life here,
boiling black bittersweet
medicinal herbs to chase away
our childhood demons, cooking 
all day long in her big black
steel wok, a thousand aromas hung
in the air, each defining her
in ways we never knew — her
longbeans stir fried in belachan,
chicken braised in soya sauce
and chopped red chilis, nasi lemak,
onde onde, pandan chiffon cakes,
curry chicken, square tofu topped
with minced pork — while little brother
and I played on the table, hands deep
in floury dough as she chopped
her way into our stomachs
and hearts, and scrubbed
her wok until fingers were raw
and wrinkled. She aged
before our eyes but we
did not know it, shutting
our eyes and ears to the smashing
of glasses thrown onto walls, the yelling
for us to leave her alone, the crying
when father failed
to come home, the crashing
of her body on the floor. 

All at once, I am
my mother’s daughter again,
chopper in hand, dicing small,
red onions at the sink, eyes blinded
by the sting of tears, they fall, one
after the other, flowing
like unspoken words
into the sinkhole.