Tuesday Poem - 'Morning Ride' by Lisa Jacobson

Morning Ride

Eltham Station, 8.01 am

School girls whinny and toss their yellow manes

in half-wild herds on board the morning train.

I'll never be like that again. What's quick

in them now slows in me, though I recall

their visceral scent, new-glistening, which makes

grown men and school boys shift, ambivalent

in their vinyl seats. The girls gossip and stamp

their black-laced feet. Some part their legs a bit.

Something's begun, some urgent heartstrong need

for root and seed that no old god can halt,

no worn-out creed. The train groans to a stop.

The girls get off in a flecked-skirt, skittish mob,

disperse. And yet, the taut wire of their want

persists; their sharp desire, its imperative.

I really look forward to The Best Australian Poems each year.

It's always a feast. And this year it is not sorted from Adamson

to Ziguras (or even vice versa) nor by the title of the poem, but

by a narrative imperative. Look, almost every poem in the book

is tip top, (it's a rare year that has many duds) but this mob of

school girls on the train is my first pick to share. I have been

one of those girls, and now I am not one of those girls.

Tuesday Poem - 'At River Bend' by Frances Olive

At River Bend

April

I

First blue day -

mint on the water.

Above the clothes line

a wedge-tailed eagle

does not mention me.

All my plans

aren't a woman

now I am here.

With my thought I snatch

the fishtail -

passing future.

Is this a path?

Or is it my eyes

who are tame?

When will my memories

learn non-attachment?

One month passes

more slowly than the moon.

II

Slipping on the lazy morning

the sun wheel gifts me

her spare hour.

Tomorrow is clean as stripped bark;

still, today is not a tree.

Green grass wears

a blue face.

The day moon

upsets

our picture books.

When is this present?

I don't remember it.

Arriving is

hot in the hall.

A held breath

breaks

on laughter.

Talk happy

tangled in the sun.

How can I remember in time,

not to rush?

III

Too quickly passes

the beauty

of the river.

This gold guitar is all that's left

of the yellow moon.

What is silence,

that is brought by the loud rain?

If I turn in

am I sleeping or entering?

Because only God is perfect,

on such a night

we will spill a little wine on the carpet.

May

I

My words spilled before strangers

are strangers.

What white face stands

opposite truth?

She is there.

Why can't I lift her

out of my eyes?

When there is no reason,

there is the pink dawn.

Rain brightly breaks

into my solitude.

You have buried a cloud

beneath the path.

Is it you

or the day

who passes?

What is the river,

that when I open my door

it comes in?

II

The twitching grass -

I see you rain!

The glowing moss

is eating

the light.

Yellow moon through wood-smoke

(memory rising)

Can you see the clearing

for which I am longing?

As we talk

hot chestnuts

burn my fingers.

It's easy

lighting candles

for the bath.

III

More rain!

Do you want to fall to Earth

old sky?

The cold in stones

is trying to leave.

Is smoke the future

or the memory

of fire?

I sadly grow accustomed

to beauty.

Only midnight.

What luxury!

Seven more hours to sleep.

Where does terror go

when we wake?

Gum trees rock softly,

cradles

in the wind.

Night tenderness -

cicadas after rain.

June

​I

Beautiful dawn

blows clean.

The animal has lost

her burrow

night.

Old typewriter,

words pass through

with suitcases.

Memory – a scent

I cannot place.

A house

can be

a well.

II

The wane of year -

each day sliced thin

The blue-lipped land

has eaten my time.

Winter pollen – the bee

calm on my foot.

The old spirit:

smoke in your hair.

Cold creaks her body

through my body.

I will learn from the river

how she leaves.

III

Come!

We have something to travel.

The end of home;

I pack away my mind.

The longest night -

talk

our fire in space.

Embers smack

their toothless lips.

Sudden rain -

cleanse me with falling!

Spring is a memory

of what comes.

And another of the short listed poems from The Newcastle Poetry Prize.

At River Bend is such a magnificently calm, lucid piece of work. It puts

me in my proper frame of mind.

And how, oh how! it reminded me of my year at Honey Cottage in the

Wairarapa on the Hungaroa River. What a blessing it is to live by a river.

Tuesday Poem - 'Walking the Undoing' by Anne Walsh

Walking the Undoing

My body is my attempt at graceful healing.

It's the archive of my undoing.

A two-legged word for loss.

And my writing is how I walk the undoing.

And how I walk it is up to the weather.

If it's raining down the inside of my shutters,

if it's torrential and my trees are thrown,

I walk well and my body heals.

It's so graceful in a storm.

But if there's too much sun, and it lights too much who I could've been,

I wilt with my lettuce words and I can't find a place to keep them.

No crisper to keep the secret of them graceful in my body

stumbling in all that un-refrigerated light.

And I have to accomplish more of what is accepted as accomplishment

when the weather is considered fine.

There's washing of clothes and of myself that's expected.

Washing and I hanging with expectation.

So, on fine days, I accomplish a lot and get nothing done.

Because my only doing is my undoing.

My only walk is this body.

These words.

And there's a choir that sings them, I swear it.

It's the loam voices of the dead in barnyard light.

Because adoration is like that. Rafters. A wing.

And the dead sing do nothing; accomplish us.

Walking is not something I do without their choir accompaniment.

It's the symphony of how I do my undoing.

The exquisite opera of inclement weather sung by the diva dead.

Scarlet lipstick. Crimson boots. Curtains. Lost love.

This is the time to act, they sing, so undo yourself, listen.

That's why my body is graceful in storms.

It's lithe with listening to the woodwind Beloveds,

to the strings of everything, to the rain thick as brass.

The chemistry of the lover's brain is un-sound.

I'm a lunatic accomplishing nothing.

The choir singing through this body.

This one answer to everything.

This word of the body, this body of the word.

The walking I do with you now.

This pure love accomplished.

I had an excellent weekend in Newcastle recently, attending the celebrations

circling around the Newcastle Poetry Prize. (Joint winners Debi Hamilton and

Anthony Lawrence, congrats!) And of course I invested in the anthology to

assuage the long, long journey back home to Melbourne by bus. (Fear of flying.)

This mordant yet exultant piece by Anne Walsh was one that really took my eye.

It is true, in the midst of everything else, there is always the washing.

http://www.hunterwriterscentre.org/newcastle-poetry.html

Tuesday Poem - 'The Hand' by Jennifer Compton

The Hand

We'd finished shooting, I'd got my glasses back on.

I lit a cigarette, letting the sweet smoke lift me and

I turned my head to stare afar with one eye,

the other one held on to what only I can see.

As the hand swooped up to my lips to deliver the hit

I began to riff. Do you see, how I am about to speak?

*

When I was a young woman, oh a long long time ago,

my most hideous, heaving nightmare was my mother

laying my hand on the butcher block and with a swift

gesture, lopping it. Night after night, I lost my hand.

Waking in the dark, sweating, feeling for the precious

hand that wrote my stuff. Why would my mother want

to cut it off? My beautiful hand, my sagacious hand.

*

It arrived as an attachment, the photo he had snatched

after we had finished shooting, that is the way of it, but

with a hand deformed by slow motion, twice life-size,

monstrous, levitating a doppelganger of a cigarette.

I clattered out an impassioned message and pressed Send.

'Can you take out the hand?' So he did. He purged the hand

with her familiar, it was never there. Can you see it, no?

http://hunterpublishers.com.au/books/land-before-lines/ 

Check out this most interesting and archival of books by Nicholas Walton-
Healey, released last year.  My picks of the photos are Steve Smart and PiO. 

As for my poem itself - well I am not sure. It could be the initiating poem of my

next book, or it could just get tucked into the archives.

Tuesday Poem - 'Standing Orders' by Jennifer Compton

Standing Orders

They issued me with my identity

drilled me in the finer points of usage

shipped me in then — nothing.

The radio transmitter — silent

in the attic

these fifty years.

Awaiting orders

I vanish into a life very like

my life.

I catch the 92 or 94 from the corner

ready to counter — Top-hole morning!

with — Whizz-bang!

But my contact hasn't

made contact

yet.

Tonight, listening to the News at eleven o'clock

I hear a noise I can't place.

A valve about to blow?

Ticking

like a clock about to strike.

But we don't have a striking clock.

I go up to the attic

switch the gizmo on to green alert.

Recalled!

Sent here for no reason

to do

nothing.

I will be away for a bit up in Sydney and Newcastle and I am struggling to get 

to the end of something before I go, so quickly and lazily I pop up an old poem 

of mine. 

I am starting to consider a Selected. If not now, then when?  

So I am mostly reading old stuff when I go out to poetry readings, just to check 

how it stands up.

Someone did say to me - 'Don't be unkind to young Jennifer'. Which is something 

to keep in mind.

This poem I am in two minds about. I got it from a BBC TV play about two

Russian sleeper spies settled in England. They married, got jobs, waited, and 

waited for orders, their radio sets stowed up in their attics.

Met once a week during the season in the stands at the football match.

'Anything?' - out of the corner of a mouth. 'No, nothing.'

And then they would enjoy the football match.

But one day they got a message when they went up to the attic to check their sets.

I am in two minds about the poem. I don't think it has enough life of its own without

the explication.

And also, who now knows what 'standing orders' are? Or 'gizmo'. Or how radio

valves would need to be replaced. It's all a bit musty I think.

Tuesday Poem - 'in the palace of broken men' by David Stavanger

in the palace of broken men

there are few women

mothers call on the weekend

new friends come by in the night

the only language second-hand vinyl

t-shirts swapped, beers opened

brief pats on the back and surnames

meetings are held on the threshold

the kitchen is the best place to talk

sighing is the first act of morning

in the toilet books but no paper

rat baits but no rats

an unnamed smell in the bedroom

bins put out not brought back in

defective fans in the middle of summer

can't locate documents when required

a birth certificate photocopied five times

two television points but no aerial

picture of a couple drowning in a boat

random toys underfoot, many are broken

the constant drone of recollection

opening the back door slowly

to let out the muttering light

 In case you wonder if my life is a constant glittering stream of top-notch literary

events,well, it is LOL. I was the warm-up act for the Melbourne launch (by Angela
Meyer) of David Stavanger's new book 'The Special (UQP) last week, and
 although there were at least five must-see events on that night (Melbourne, I hate
you!) what a rip-snorting, take it as it comes, fly fly little bird sort of night it was.
But David always seems to be at the centre of that sort of thing. I believe the book
has gone into a second printing, so relax if you haven't located a copy yet. 

http://www.uqp.uq.edu.au/Book.aspx/1305/The%20Special

Tuesday Poem - 'The future of genetics' by Andy Jackson

The future of genetics

Through a cold foyer, we're ushered in

and down into the cavernous theatre by a string

of young women in academic gowns.

Their smiles seem genuine. Something

not unlike a twisted ladder, we're told,

spins invisibly at the core of us.

Each DNA strand, if unwound, would span

a metre and a half. We're quietly impressed

and think of knitting, of surgery and love,

as one single cell appears, wall-high,

before us. This is the culmination of countless

experiments by computer animators

and geneticists. The projection falters again -

a black-clad technician rushes up,

hunched over, as if in obeisance, then

disappears. The laser pointer hovers

shakily for a moment over indigenous,

as the speaker mentions ethics, then moves on.

We're reassured Exxon is developing

a synthetic organism that could replace oil.

Another professor sniffs into a handkerchief,

blows her nose. One roving microphone

and ten minutes for the history and future

of genetics, as the house lights come up on us.

We can't help but gaze at each other's arms

and faces. Lights shine and turn on the surface

of our eyes. We are all strangely alive.

All our very good questions are answered

confidently. At the exit, a metallic tree

of coathangers, a sign disclaiming

responsibility. We lift our heavy coats -

the hangers chime.

I went to the launch (by Kevin Brophy) of Andy Jackson's the thin bridge

(Whitmore Press Poetry) at Collected Works, and what a top night. I don't

think I have ever heard Kevin be more apposite or askew – and then the

book! Andy's work just gets better and better. It becomes more yielding,

more trenchant, more charming, and more exacting. All I can say is that

it is a pity the Whitmore Press Manuscript Prize only has a print run of

200 copies. That just doesn't seem quite enough for such a little ripper

of a book.

http://whitmorepress.com/2014/08/08/launch-of-new-andy-jackson-collection-melbourne-5th-september/

Tuesday Poem - 'Aubade' by Kevin Brophy

Aubade

     Think in the morning. Act in the noon. Eat in the evening. Sleep in

        in the night. William Blake.

He's young again, my old friend,

and has not cured himself of the habit

of pulling curtains aside and raising blinds

as he slips in and comes through the house.

He's already opened the kitchen window for me

and settled on the balcony, slouching on its long bench, ready.

We sit for a while out here considering

the nature of the light this morning.

I tell him, again, I'd like him to stay all day.

Nosing through the long grass above the house

two dogs from next door trot past, sniff the sweet william.

He shivers in his thin jacket, dawn's frost still in him.

I mention fireflies we saw last night

though I know this is a sight he can't imagine.

I tell him my hip and right calf are tight

from yesterday's walk in these mountains.

He says he walks everywhere he goes and I believe him.

He watches me do some stretches, finds it amusing.

I know that when I go inside to the coffee pot

he will leave. I do think, though, that he's curious

about how a whole day might go, its hollowed out

brightness, eventual dusk, descent into night.

When I come back from the kitchen with coffee

I'll sit where he was sitting and consider the valley,

its vines that hold out their last leaves eager for this light.

As a rule, since Larkin's Aubade, I am a bit stringent about the use of

the word as the title of a poem. So I approached this poem stringently,

which may have been why it took me a moment to tumble to it. When I

did I gave a little grin and a chuckle, as if the poet was joking with me,

(maybe he was) and I thought – Yep. You've earned it. Only title you could

have used.

I also really liked the use of personification, and wondered if perhaps the

poet is a fan of Keats, maybe back in the day, like we all were back in the

day. Maybe some of us still are fans. John Keats' To Autumn was the first

time I stumbled upon personification, and now I realise it is a weapon I

have never added to my arsenal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Autumn

Kevin Brophy's new and selected book Walking, is now available from -

http://johnleonardpress.com/?p=195

Tuesday Poem - 'Charlie Twirl' by Alan Gould

Charlie Twirl
16/8/1945 George Street, Sydney

This is the Street of Hullaballoo
when poor link arms with the well-to-do,
two Diggers drunk beyond all help,
vast crowds a-sway like ocean kelp.

This is the Street of Broad Hooray.
Papers blizzard on its grey,
and folk go wigged in shredded files;
unprompted are their camera smiles.

My darlings, look, we have come through!
declare the crowds on Hullaballoo,
who conjure from their one ahoy
this genie now to seize their joy,

to skip and sway and doff his trilby,
pirouette his sideways smile,
and signal how all futures will be
made the lighter for his style.

This is no more than circumstance,
and this tall fellow’s brilliant dance
has just eight seconds in our view
as Newsreel trawls on Hullaballoo.

Yet catch the sob of pure release
from those for whom he’s centrepiece
so bravo and so fugitive
as he takes flight in ‘forty five,

this Mister Zeitgeist, Charlie Twirl -
whose name will be historical
for all there’s nothing in a name
when dance outdances personal claim

to touch the quick of what’s in view
along the tides of Hullaballoo,
where strangers link an arm and arm
to joy at others saved from harm

on isles of acrid ballyhoo
where wreckage is the homely view
till lifted now from that sheer pall
by this so debonair morale.

Our camera tremors on its scene
to steady light for where we’ve been,
this day of papers churned to snow
and crowds in archipelago,

to lift us with these ballet motions,
this blithest fuse for huge emotions
with commentary so bygone, yet
the footage of this pirouette

tracking the shots on Deep Hooray
where this Mad Hatter flaunts his sway,
lighting what’s meant when Hullaballoo
slips arm through arm with me and you.



I took a trip up to Bendigo for the Writers Festival recently, and while
I was there I bumped into Les Murray, and he pressed this poem upon
me with assurances that it was masterly. I didn't disagree with him.
Below I have added a link to the inspiration for the poem, for those
too young to know of it, for those who live in other countries and who
are steeped in other cultural images.


http://www.alangouldwriter.com/


http://aso.gov.au/titles/newsreels/movietone-special-peace/clip2/

Tuesday Poem - 'CONTEMPLATING A MIGRAINE' by John Mateer

CONTEMPLATING A MIGRAINE

Words, there are for this, but the thing — a distant flaring

under the crust of my skin, deep inside its shifting homeliness.

Pain: the purest life. I could start to pray …

Through the window, as compensation, the rain gently gives me the garden,

its mossy rocks, its green benevolence, the garden that drops away

into the soaring cedar forest suggestive of the opposite of whatever

this pain is.

I would say, a kind of mountain.

                                                                     But maybe I am the mountain,

and the pain, hidden in cloud, is a foreboding shrine, unvisited.

I don't bump into John Mateer very often around the traps, so took the chance

to go to his reading at Collected Works in Melbourne, oh maybe six months ago.

I am very taken with his work. It is kind of cool, maybe even abstemious. It is a

hinting, glancing, stringent (astringent?) exercise of the use and power of language.

http://www.fremantlepress.com.au/books/1400

Tuesday Poem - 'Angels' by Luke Fischer

Angels

I wonder sometimes whether angels are waitresses

and we spend our lives at a large table in a dim bistro.

A business man recounts the success of a trade-deal

with China while a mother relates how her son broke

his leg in training for the junior Olympics. A football match

unrolls on a corner screen backed by drunken cheers and sighs.

Roses for your lady, a migrant asks a spruce young man,

pleading with his gaze and wafting the perfumed bouquet.

And he scores! We toast with full glasses that shimmer

like dusk on the wine-dark sea and graze on plates of pretzels

that never run out. Have you heard the story about the donkey?

says a man with a bristly beard. Well, once upon a time

there lived a donkey, a very happy donkey. Every morning he went

to his trough and always found plenty of feed … Meanwhile

a mademoiselle lures the tide of her date's feeling

with her shadowed lunar eyes. At times we overhear

the decanting of a spring, glimpse silhouettes

of supple hands, a disembodied face in a tea-light's flicker

but pay little thought to these apparitions

until the waiter appears at 2 a.m. : a final round

or shall I bring the bill?

Good stuff from Luke Fischer's book 'Paths of Flight' put out by Black Pepper.

I happened to be at the Melbourne launch (jointly with Chains of Snow by Jakob

Ziguras – Pitt Street Poetry). You know how you can just happen to be at a launch.

Had a good time, heard some good work, invested in two books.

http://blackpepperpublishing.com/current_releases.html

Tuesday Poem - 'The end of the shed' by Sandra Thibodeaux

The end of the shed

You pull down the shed and ignore the long-grass

that’s trying to tell you the obvious

about leaving things go too long.

This is a love affair in reverse.

This is creation caving in.

You look at a slab of concrete where a shed has been.

You stand in a shower cubicle

without the shower, without the cubicle.

You peer over the drain,

watch the dregs of rain and try

to work out what comes next.

A stream of smoke next-door

gives permission to destroy the rest.

               Wiring, defeated, cut at the roots

                Doors, destined for pigs, strapped to the ute

                Hardware deals discounted by flames

                Tiles you’ll never lay

                A tired Christmas tree

                Tunnels in a French dictionary –

                white ant resistance

                The score of Stabat Mater

                past singing for a wasted son

                Weeping negatives

                in an age where no-one knows

                what to do with them anymore

                but their eyes burn holes through stories

                you’ve heard before

Suddenly, your lover’s gone

and you look at a gaping hole

where a shed once stood,

where a shed once stood in the way

of your Balinese vision:

verandah, termite-treated timber

and a shower with a portal to the moon,

clean as it always was,

waiting for you to clear that ugly ruin.

I haven't met Sandra yet, or heard her read, because she lives in Darwin,

at the Top End, as they say, but I am looking forward to it. One day soon.

Chris Mansell describes her work (on the back of Sandra's new book 'Dirty
 H2O' from Mulla Mulla Press) as – 'Turbulent, hot and irascible.' And that is
just about right, I would say.

http://mullamullapress.com/Dirty-H2O-by-Sandra-Thibodeaux-mulla-mulla-press

Tuesday Poem - 'So Over The Rainbow' by Jennifer Compton

So Over the Rainbow

My son tells me that

it's all over the Internet

Dark Side of the Moon

is the soundtrack for

The Wizard of Oz.

O Emerald City!

I travel north to pitch

a film to Fox

reading Spinster

by Ashton-Warner

written on my patch.

So few of us

from Kiwiland

that paua is annotated.

As the train pulls into

Emerald Central - paua*

*paua - irridescent hell.

I am awaiting permission from a poet (who is away at a festival it seems)

so was caught short this week without a poem. I was rummaging around

in my back files and came upon this poem, which I have always liked, but

have never managed to get anyone else enthusiastic about. No one seems

to get it. I suppose it hinges upon knowing that Sydney used to be called

Emerald City from time to time, oh way back then. And that I didn't live in

Sydney at that time. And as I am from NZ I know a paua when I come across

one. And the book, written by a NZer, which I was reading in the train, had a

most amusing typo. Hell instead of shell. That I read as the train was pulling

into Sydney (Emerald City). A poem shouldn't need so much explication,

right? But still, I have an affection for the poem. This is its first outing.