Tuesday Poem - Country Chinese Restaurants by Mandy Sayer

Country Chinese Restaurants

There's always one in every town

Coonabarabran: Golden Sea Dragon

Dubbo: Fu Lee Way. Maybe your car

Broke down, or you're on the road

With someone who doesn't love

You anymore. Manjimup: Fu Hua

Kangy Angy: New Shanghai. Always

A fish tank in one corner, walls

Panelled with imitation teak, plastic

Scrolls of misted mountains, water

Falls, a lone man fishing. Toowoomba:

Ni Hao; Wangaratta: Koon Way. Vinyl

Booths, nylon lanterns, laminated

Menus flecked with soy, old prices

Rubbed out and handwritten in pen

A teenage girl at the back, hunched

Over homework, harangued

By her mother into waiting on you

Numurkah: Jung Sung Harbour

Gilgandra: Dragon & Phoenix

The chef has fled and the father

Is frying. They're usually empty now

There's take-away. Four-dollar

Cocktails & paper parasols. Maybe

You're on the run – an unpaid hotel bill

Or worse, looking for something you

Never had. Mudgee: Kai Sun; Wagga:

Lum Inn. The wok-steamed weather

& Confucius in a cookie.

Mandy Sayer

I know of Mandy Sayer as an award-winning novelist and memoir writer,

anthologist and journalist, and had no idea she wrote poetry as well, so was

surprised and tickled to come upon this rip-snorting tour of the culinary

delights of the outback in The Best Australian Poems 2013.

http://naher.com.au/authors/bio/mandy-sayer/

Tuesday Poem - Strange, unremarkably so by Anna Fern

Strange, unremarkably so

They just want to keep talking when I read a normal poem,

but an experimental sound poem

brings a whole bar of drunks to silence.

Loading up the car, I admire the enhanced reflections of scudded

clouds on the back window, the sun a bright disc.

Hey, you could watch a solar eclipse on this thing!

The bathroom mirror says I can leave the house looking pretty good,

but when I see my reflection in shop windows I want to go home.

Completing an unremarkable transaction on the phone, the customer

says 'love you' and hangs up.

On the freeway, it's best not to think about the possibility of dying.

Try to marvel at how cooperative we can be.

Peak hour, I notice a puff of white fluff from the car in front. Then

another. Then a burst of white feathers. A perfect white dove falls

plop! onto the road in front of my car, sits up, flies away. I think, the

driver of that car is a magician, or maybe an escape artist.

Tonight, I was greeted by the neighbour's cat on the back verandah.

Proof that when a cat dies, all the other cats redistribute themselves

to fill the empty space.

Anna Fern lives in Melbourne and writes wonderful poems, both 'normal'

and 'sound' poems, and is a consummate performer. This poem was in 
The Best Australian Poems 2013.

http://www.blackincbooks.com/books/best-australian-poems-2013

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Tuesday Poem - moment by Jane Williams

moment

two girls get on a bus wearing matching mini skirts

and fake fur collared jackets when the bus driver asks

what fare? they whisper child like it's a great shame

that won't have to bear for much longer

one or two more years maybe already their heels lift them

one whole inch over the legal age they sit crossing and

uncrossing legs locking and unlocking mobile phones

like they're expecting important calls they speak to each other

in the coded half sentences of the cool beginning each one

with the word like as if reality is relative they raise

the volume every now and then to emphasise brand

names or bemoan such injustices as a forfeited allowance

or being grounded when the bus slows to a stop

in the middle of the road and the driver mumbles

c'mon boys move it along the girls look out the window and

catch a flurry of orange strange birds in slow motion

about to take flight but in no hurry and before they can

check themselves all pretence at sophistication crumbles

as they cry out in unison

oh look! monks! monks!

 

I haven't heard Jane Williams read her work before so I nipped along to the
launch of her New and Selected - Days Like These - (Interactive Press) at
Collected Works and was well pleased to put a voice to the work. I invested
in a copy - very readable work.

http://www.ipoz.biz/Titles/DLT.htm