Tuesday Poem - oh yes by Jennifer Compton

oh yes

alexandra has a lot on her plate oh yes

she is scoffing up & chewing hard on

TEXTIMAGECULTURECREATIVE&PROFESSIONALWRITING

& the unexpected but very welcome baby oh yes

i mopped her kitchen floor while nicholas slept

she tinkered with a story

using one finger & one side of her brain

i scrubbed the stove top oh yes

she tapped

i scoured

we spoke

like guys at a work bench bent to it not seeking eye contact

at 6 am we had checked out the news nicholas on her tit

& the news was very hideous

but not quite critical mass yet oh yes not meltdown yet

no one would invite a child into this big raw mess

but if they insist

if they take their chance & muscle in it's on their heads good luck

so on to the chiropractor in berwick for our bad backs

i needed x-rays so alexandra ran me round to radiology

nicholas threw a jaunty arm across his nana's knee

& stood on his own feet which is his new trick

just look at me

oh yes

elderly girl fans on the far side of the waiting room exulted

their palms clasped together with an oh oh yes

then a polish woman with a fuckyou face said to my nakedness

hold still plis

I am giving this poem an airing as a page poem because it was recently aired as
an audio file as part of the latest issue of Going Down Swinging. I think you can
access it on the link below if you want to hear what it sounds like.

http://goingdownswinging.org.au/albums/35.html

Tuesday Poem - Provenance by Jennifer Compton

Provenance

There will be no card in the post come October with a $20 note tucked inside

           a card with a horse's head or a bouquet tied with ribbon

                     a looping scribble—written propped up in bed—

                               recommending cake or a box of chocs.

*

As I predicted no card arrived from the woman who had given me my birthday.

It would have been remarkable if it had. But I checked the letterbox. No card.

I don’t much like cake and chocolate. Once I had caved in to my own tastes

I always bought smokes. I checked the letterbox again. Still nothing. How odd.

I feel as light as the fruit of a dandelion, or a puff of smoke, I light a cigarette.

I look at the sky, I pull a weed—barefoot— my birthday, and still no card yet.

*

I know the glass dog with one leg missing, which could stand if propped

against the side mirror of her dressing table

—his nose like a blueberry, his raspberry eyes—

was sent by her brother, during the war, from Belgium, and broken en route.

           But now I will never know the provenance of the plate that

                    was always used for pavlova—topped with passionfruit,

or chinese gooseberries, or tree tomatoes. I have it in my dresser, propped,

           did people gift cake plates, or was it for the glory box?

                     If I never asked now I will never know.

There is no way of knowing. Everyone who knew the provenance of things

is dead. The old women, who tended these things—

a flick of the dust rag, and every once in a while

a dip in soapsuds and a roll and a pat in a towel—all the old women are gone.

Does anyone know that my toast rack shaped like a swan

                       was a wedding present from great-aunt Nell back in 1971?

Tuesday Poem - Snowflake by Anthony Lawrence

Snowflake

My mother kept a snowflake

in the freezer all winter.

Each time she opened the door

of the refrigerator

she would make a sound

like a Burmese kitten

being surprised by itself.

When I asked how she could tell

her snowflake from so many

crystals of ice, her smile

revealed the sapphires she'd had set

into her front teeth, and she said

'Mine has worn an intricate

indentation as though

hot lace had passed

between the peas and ice cream.'

I settled for that, as I knew how hard

she had to work to keep level.

At dinner I would pretend

to be a good son, and her smile

enameled the table

with points of dark blue light.

I was passing through Sydney last year and happened to be staying around

the corner from the Friend In Hand in Glebe where Puncher & Wattman were

launching a couple of books. One of them was Signal Flare by Anthony Lawrence.

Now this is a book that is stuffed full of wonderful poetry and the difficulty for me

was which one to choose. Anthony Lawrence just keeps on getting better and
 better. After much dithering I went with Snowflake (and not The Linesman, Owl,
Appellations,The Decision, Domestic Emergencies or Winging It) because I heard 
Anthony read Snowflake at the launch and it got under my skin. 

http://puncherandwattmann.com/books/book/signal-flare