Tuesday Poem - The Landscape by Mary McCallum

 

 

The Landscape

 

My father serves lunch, lifts

the salad with servers, offers

a dish of olives,

the muted light stroking his

 

hands, head bent as if

in a pew, paler

than I think of him.

On the pergola

 

above, the leaves of the vines

are ecstatic and lime-bright,

a scribble of veins,

tendrils, shadows - a reminder how light

 

both clarifies and complicates -

how a simple landscape of skin, let's say,

can become a whole atlas.

Here the x-ray,

 

there the scan.

The chickens

pant in the hedge.

He chops bread

and chunks of cheese, lays

one on the other

passes it across the table

to my mother,

 

his hand a plate. She's feeling

the heat, longs to be cool

 inside with a book, is looking

up, grateful

for the vines, for the lean of the tree

beside us, its pollen rising rapidly like small fish

in a vertiginous sea.

The olive dish

is passed around again. My father

sweeps crumbs

onto the grass with his hand. (He asks

the surgeon now and then, 'When it comes

again how will I know?') All this

light and still the incomprehensible

scrabble of things,

dark scribbles

that dim

the bright falling. Above,

the sky's open palm,

supplicating leaves.

 

 

While I was in NZ, staying out at Eastbourne with Mary and her family, rejoicing in  the view of Makaro Island, she gave me a copy (number 59/100) of her amazing little book - The Tenderness Of Light. The first book out from her own Makaro Press. 

Oh well - it is just a little stunner. One of the poems - After Reading Auden - won the Caselberg Prize two years ago.. 

Bad luck for you, the book is all sold out. But I have a copy - number 59.

I chose The Landscape because of its tenderness, because of its light.

Details about the book: http://www.mary-mccallum.blogspot.co.nz/2012/03/tuesday-poem-tenderness-of-light-my-new.html

Youtube reading here: http://youtu.be/fYQmikKpT0I

Tuesday Poem - Blood Love by Coral Carter

Blood Love

I met my cousin

on Wilson Street

at 16 he dived

into a rock

did time in a chair

now walks with a stick

feet twisted out

like Charlie Chaplin

but no one is laughing

we met last

at uncle’s wake

the ghost of our grandmother came

cursed as she poured the whisky

down the drain

the girl cousins

sang sad movies in their underwear

our cousin broke down

said we didn’t love him

we said

blood love

is deep and red

it stains

that was before another cousin

wrestled him to the ground

in front of 36 Varden Street

to take his keys

not that he had a driver’s licence anyway

we rang a taxi and sent him home

we remembered his father

who won the lottery

drank 12 longnecks a night

until his brain dissolved

my cousin doesn’t drink too much now

he has given up on women

they drove him to it

happier alone

his daughter – up north

his sister – round three with cancer

he wears the Aboriginal colours on his wrist

a twenty year old hat

black jeans skinny legs

I met my cousin on Wilson Street

not the kind of bloke

some would want to meet

but

blood love

is deep and red

it stains.

Here is a poem from Coral Carter’s new book – Descended From Thieves – which she just launched in Melbourne (with my book Ungainly) and in Port Augusta. I think there are launches coming up soon in Kalgoorlie, where Coral lives, and in Perth. As Coral said – “Everyone wants the free wine.” Or something very like that.

http://www.mullamullapress.com/

Tuesday Poem - A Night At The Theatre by Jennifer Compton

A Night At The Theatre

The play was bad.

The set was bad.

The actors were very bad.

The directing was bad.

The lighting was bad.

The sound was bad.

I wanted to leave at the interval

but my husband said — No, it's rude.

The supper? The supper was good.

Here is a little poem from my new little book - 'Ungainly' (Mulla Mulla Press). I am still reeling from an amazing double launch with Coral Carter's 'Descended From Thieves' (Mulla Mulla Press) at Collected Works in Melbourne. 

'Ungainly' is a little jeu d'esprit, a tiny drama, a wee farouche farrago.

Warning - Contains Traces Of Tobacco.

Tuesday Poem - The Bowsprit Chronicles by Sue Wootton

The Bowsprit Chronicles

I gaze where the ship points me. On up-swells

I glimpse clouds; swinging down, I peer

into the keel-split water. I am always proud,

even disdainful: I slight porpoise and albatross

without favour. I am the sailor’s muse, the ship’s courage.

This fact sings in my cedar blood.

I go first. The lady leads the way. There are zircon harbours

in the tropics into which I glide: a queen with her retinue

of masts and flags and white sails, sailors skimming

up and down the rigging nimble-footed, alive with the prospect

of grog tonight and easy women. While they are gone

I refuse to miss them.

I give them my best smile next morning as they saunter to the dock.

My best cracked maiden’s wince. I go first. Out of the harbour,

feeling the weight of fresh water in the holds, goat meat

and pineapples, the sailors with their sore heads and balls

hauling on the mainsail, singing shanties to banish

their fear of the sea.

When the ocean’s rough I sew it: in and out, in and out,

the interminable waves like oncoming satin,

vast nightmare curtains swishing and swashing,

slippery, the seam refusing to close, raw unmatchable edges

fraying as soon as I touch them. I will tell you now

my salted secret:

even with arms to gather the winds to my cleavage;

even with fingers to smooth the rucked fabric of the sea;

even with tongue to sing every lullaby I ever learned

from drowning sailors as their lips were greening –

even with these scented skills, I could not hold these storms.

I go first: into the reef if necessary.

I had the very great pleasure of hearing Sue read at the Thistle Inn on my last night in Wellington recently. This poem comes from her first collection – Hourglass (Steele Roberts 2005). Sue told me she checks out the poems I post from time to time, so now I am really on my mettle to seek out wondrous work, work that really brings me out in a sweat or gets my blood boiling so I may amaze her. There is nothing quite like poetry, I find, to usher amazement in.

http://suewootton.co.nz/

Tuesday Poem - Damp little Oedipus by Helen Lehndorf

Damp little Oedipus

The bed is a boat, filling with, filling with—

we are trying to launch into sleep

limp, limp, lull and skull

hot, close night—95% humidity,

5% humility,

0% humanity

His naked six year old body in the lamp-

light taking up the bed. Breathing the air

holding my cheeks in his hands, using

my breast for a pillow, grinding grinding his knee

into my thigh. We tried so many times

to put him back to bed but he was so hot

he sprang back, he would spring up

and we keep finding him here,

right in the middle of us.

He is clam,

all clammy and cling-cling.

You peel him off the bed:

'Damp little Oedipus', you fold him in a sheet

and mail him back to bed, you wedge his door

shut with James Joyce's 'Ulysses'. He goes

cry,cry,cry but we select deafness.

We are finally drifting off and then I wake us up to say

'What are you thinking about?' and you say

'Computer hardware' and make a small

mock-orgasmic sound.

Tuesday Poem - James Dean by James Norcliffe

James Dean

When the workmen had finally finished cutting the heavy black rubber tubing from the machine, they retired to a bench for a smoke.

One sat apart from the others with a faraway smile on his face. He was shirtless and his upper body was bronzed and shiny.

When he leaned into the circle of his hand, a match flickering there, I saw at once that this was James Dean.

He sat alone then, smiling, his cigarette like a tiny white exhaust pipe, dangling from his lower lip.

I wanted to speak to him, but I was too shy. He was already famous. I wanted to warn him of the flickering flame, the drifts of smoke.

But it was not possible I knew. I was too shy to attempt more than a small nod and a half smile, which he did acknowledge with a tip of his finger.

Besides, he would have thought I was referring to his Lucky Strike. Besides he was writing his own story, and it was his alone, not mine.

Here's another lovely poem I found in the latest edition of Poetry NZ.