Tuesday Poem - The Director's Resurrection by Jennifer Compton

The Director’s Resurrection

Hist!

My grandfather, the coal carter, started a new business

in the house where his wife and nine children lived.

When he died, after an illness, his two sons

took over the business,

a wooden box factory, can you imagine?

My father, the younger, the Company Director.

My uncle, the elder, the Managing Director.

The family no longer lived on the premises.

My father took his ticket to be a saw doctor. And yes,

I’ve heard all the jokes about the saw doctor’s daughter.

He’d come home of an evening, scattering sawdust,

with talk of pinus radiata and a queer sort of tree –

forbeetoo. Say it quite slowly.

He’d spent the day with his head bent to the

incandescent shrieking of band saws and circular saws,

and his brother above him. Always above him.

I knew on the early starts when he was the only

one there, he threw crumbs for a mouse

that he swore was the same one, year after year.

I don’t think so.

But of what did he think as he bent to the work

his wife and children had sentenced him to?

One night he came home from The Box Factory, reached for

the bottle marked Drink Me – turned to me with a sweet smile.

You like books – he said – and I thought of a good one.

You could write it you know, for I don’t have the gift.

The band saw jammed, like they often do. As I crouched

down to clear it I saw I’d left the safety off, and sweat!

That was nearly me! And I thought of a thriller

where two brothers run a business.

The older one grinds the younger down so he plots to behead him.

Then he’s called away because, say, his wife is having a baby.

He sees his chance, leaves the safety off.

His brother has to cover but he hasn’t got his ticket

so when the saw jams, and they’re buggers for that,

the band saw bites down and kills him quite quickly

but no one thinks anything and after the funeral

the younger brother runs the business all on his own.

“The Director’s Resurrection!” What do you think?

It’s good – I said – It’s good. One day I’ll write it.

I have run out of other poet's poems to put up - I'm working on that, reading intensively and emailing out calling in favours. So as Poetry Tuesday is in abeyance for a while I will pull out some old stuff of mine and see how it stands up. This poem is in my book Parker & Quink published by Ginninderra Press. I thought of it because I am answering some questions for the Cordite/Prairie Schooner collaboration about work, so I went back to look at this poem.

Tuesday Poem - In the Alfred Emergency and Trauma Centre by Jennifer Compton

In the Alfred Emergency and Trauma Centre

I hate it when they usher you straight through to the Room.

I’ve never been in the Room but I always knew I would hate it.

I hate the box of tissues waiting for your tears.

I have seen that box of tissues before.

I asked a security guard what the Room was called.

I felt such a need to write an accurate poem.

He told me it was called the Grievance Room.

I looked askance, although I had a grievance.

He offered me the use of their Spirituality Centre.

I declined. But made sure of their Smoke Zone.

A pagoda arrangement out by the helipad.

A birdbath filled with sand for centrepiece.

My daughter’s injury is not time critical.

She will arrive by chopper in an hour, or two.

It’s too early for the fighting drunks.

But the legless, weeping girls are arriving.

I hate the way I have to write this poem

to send it off into the future where

time doesn’t move by fits and starts as

my silly old heart thumps and leaps.

Into the future, all smoothed, (like this moment,

perhaps, like this dull, exquisite, ordinary moment.

And someone else is getting it in the neck.

Someone else is on fire as if they were alive.)

I hate the way my tragedy walks in through their doors

20, 30, 40 times a day.

I hate the way I strike up conversations with people

seeking comfort, like a needy needy needy person.

I hate these magazines. Famous faces who have

already split getting married on a beach, barefoot.

An ICU nurse on lunchbreak in the middle of the night

confesses it is called the Distressed Relative’s Room.

I have the name. (Of it.)

I am safe. (From it.)

If I was a much nicer person I would

go down to the Spirituality Centre.

There is a book and people write poems in it.

Messages, wishes. The things that they feel.

I hate the way it should console me

but I will start criticising, I know I will.

Picky picky picky. Bathos, slop and bilge, tripe.

Already I am planning to edit, tweak, spell check.

I read this older poem for the first time recently at the Collingwood Gallery and it went down quite well. People laughed, although I assured them it was not funny. It is in my book Barefoot published by Picaro Press.

http://www.picaropress.com/page4/page4.html

Tuesday Poem - wimmera roadsong by Eric Beach

wimmera roadsong

on th left hand side


we have th left hand side


& on th right

we have th right hand side

& a silo     straight ahead

flat roads lead to friday night

they rolled their car & are dead

th wheatfields they are young & green

th donald farmer shakes his head

th racecourse is brown in warracknabeal


hopetoun streets are red

th lake's dry out of rainbow

& th cockies


(that's th birds, not th farmers)


look well fed

on th left hand side

we have th left hand side

& on th right

we have th right hand side


& a silo     straight ahead

th barber's sweeping main street


lest we forget avenue


now th second barber's sweeping main street

butcher shops like marble too


yesterday's marked down at th bakery


& th river looks like stew


on th left hand side


we have the left hand side


& on th right


we have th right hand side


& a silo     straight ahead


two kids share one ice-cream


another brief lick at th drought

when th dirt blows there's no fence

that will keep th dirt out


only stars hang in th window


roos, moving south

I heard Eric Beach read this poem in a Collingwood gallery a few weeks back and was just blown away by it. What a performer he is. He lives in Minyip now (about four hours away from Melbourne) so we just don't get to hear him as much as we would like. This poem comes from his book – Weeping For Lost Babylon which was published by Angus & Robertson in association with Paper Bark Press 1996.

For more about Eric have a look at this site.

http://www.the-write-stuff.com.au/archives/vol-2/index.html

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