Tuesday Poem - Love In The Suburbs by Peter Lach-Newinsky

1. Georges River, August. Her Poem

• ‘Put the poet watching........’

grey trees

glint and tingle

among the plastic

caught in the mangroves

the river trudges by,

thickly. Brown.

It is going to the sea.

Magpies stukkato

the hat- or stickless.

Two women are sitting on a carpark log.

Afternoon. Balance

cuppas struck by long orange light. She leans

over to the other, confides:

George isn’t very deep Flo

a bit sooperfishl. Reely. Sips.

A powerboat big-bangs it all.

The plastic shudders.

Winter doesn’t even try.

2. Lawn, Pool, TV, January. His Poem

• ‘tries to see them.....’

Water

In plastic lemonade bottles

dreaming on forlorn lawns

reclining totems

against shitting dogs.

For reasons unknown. Just trim ‘em

till you bleed

diggers of suburbia,

fiddle and blast and weed

(as tides turn

and things stir

under the silt

of the heart)

that true blue concrete-and-grass

Arcadia : (o what a lark

in the old Manor park

heigh ho

as we poached after dark

heigh ho

and were most cru-el-ly

transported !) make it

a short-back-and-sides and Decency Returned

with a vengeance, a power mower

and some agent orange

under a quite indifferent

big gun-of-a-sun. Yes dear

no dear pass the certainly

dear would you like please or

else love we can (I bloodywell hope

the scone sticks

in your throat

like a sardine can

down a pelican

righto righto righto

and your bloody girdle

explodes

as you bend down

at bowls

o yeah) but I

did remember the special

on pool chlorine at Franklin’s.

O yes, love.

Maggie love. For reasons unknown. The crack.

under the back door. The screen

flickers. The sand

from the mudflats is blown a little higher.

Brown sand. Stealthy.

Alive.

Watching.

3. Watching. The Poet’s Poem.

• ‘It is all going to the sea.....’

Put the poet watching

at the riverside carpark.

His poem of this Maggie the Magpie’s husband,

their suburban life cut up

at the top of each of their poems.

Tries to see them

tries to hear them

from within objects and personae

named like the plastic bottle totem the magpie

the other lady on the log or the log or the jerk

in the powerboat God maybe the shitting dog

the sluggish old river, naturally the river

and especially their TV set

having a secret affair with Maggie

while we see or hear their phantasy lives

in the phantasy life of the poet

who is a phantasy like George

the RSL dragonslayer (imagine he said and

the curtains weren’t even drawn I want he said

I want to stick and he only had his sweaty old

singlet on my lance in you and me

in me girdle you dragon he called me I spose

that’s sposed to be a turn-on and from behind

coming at me like a lawnmower he’s not

in the army now you know how you go

through the motions just to keep ‘em quiet

and the other night imagine Flo I dreamt

this huge great dune yeah dune just came

all over the lino I always told him to

put something under there

but the sand was brown or black and yes

full of eyes). In fact

there may be as sense of ancient things

surfacing like weeds or sandbanks

up through their suburban lives the totems

only partly buried under the obsessive lawns

returned again the sifting sands, quietly

built up by the brown wind (slow, tidal)

from the river the mudflats as they have afternoon tea

and telly (i see

i reflect them watching me as i watch them

as i throb with lurid phantasies

that flicker furiously and blare on the surface

of my glassy brain for hours it’s exhausting tho

that finger soft and stiff that pushes into me

at seven is always always exciting exciting again

as the energy surges thru the sky

and thru me me me and cataracts of wordimages

race in my veins my cells yes o yes

how lovingly she wipes me clean of that

traffic and mangrove dust on Saturdays then

even his put-put his put-put his put-put

powermower can’t come between us) and, yet

he snarled to leap at the heart of the real,

the sinews within the skin of satire, the real

slouching away along trimmed surfaces, howling

silently at cosy violence, to the ebb and flow

of caring and tortoise desperation.

So that the poet too can be seen (as he sees,

watching, by the watching river) to be

all that. Helpless in metaphor

and more than the smartfart voyeur

lawnmowing and opinionating as it is all going

to the sea and love and poetry

no overwhelming and obvious

constant cataract of passion,

for the tide is deep

and a wonderfully slow, perhaps,

brown, old

river.

Peter lives in Bundanoon in the Southern Highlands of NSW, quite close to where I used to live in Wingello. When I was running Bundanoon Poets In The Pub he was a regular and I came to know his work quite well. And to admire it. In recent years he has been featuring on the poetry prize lists quite prominently He and his wife, Barbara, run a 20 acre permaculture farm and his new work is deeply informed by this committment. Love In The Suburbs is an older poem which I have liked for a long time and is in his book The Post Man Letters published by Picaro Press.

http://www.picaropress.com/p2-3.html

Tuesday Poem - Winding Up at the Bootmaker's by Les Murray

The widow handing out
her husband's last repair jobs,
each already newsprint-wrapped

sits meanwhile in their unlit shop
hands open on her lap.
Bitter grief has nearly smoothed her skin.

Kneeling up in Mediterranean black,
reaching down the numbered parcels
as if returning all their wedding gifts.


I was very pleased when Les said it was okay to put up this poem, which is the last poem in his most recent book - Taller When Prone - published by Black Inc in Melbourne. Les is a wonderful poet, I love his work.

http://www.blackincbooks.com/books/taller-when-prone

Tuesday Poem - The Tank by Vivienne Plumb

The Tank

I hum and write, I hum under

my breath and keep writing.

A good bit about the goldfish

in the tank at Bats. The tank

sits on one of the Bats booth

tables. There are three fish.

Two look like ordinary gold

fish, but the third has really

black rings on its eyes, like

it’s been bashed by the others.

And Victor remarks: Heidi says

if you tap the tank like this,

you could give them a heart

attack. And he taps the tank.

And I guess that’s what it is

we can feel sometimes,

it’s Victor’s big fat finger

tapping the tank.

*References to ‘Bats’ – Bats Theatre, Wellington, N.Z.

I can hardly find a thing to say about this poem because the first time I read it it went straight into me and on subsequent readings it still has that same swift, sharp effect. It works and it's straight. An extra bonus for me is that I know Bats. When it was Unity Theatre that was where me and my husband-to-be played in a production of Richard III.

Vivienne Plumb was born in Australia and now lives in Auckland. I joke to her about how I was born in Wellington and now live in Australia. I tell her we keep the balance by never living in the same country. But that doesn't always work out. Sometimes we live in the same country. Her newest book is called Crumple and is put out by Helen Rickerby's Seraph Press.

http://www.seraphpress.co.nz/crumple.html

Tuesday Poem - Indian Summer by Ross Gillett

INDIAN SUMMER

1

I wanted a wigwam

My Father Christmas father

found me one.

He pitched it at night,

pushing pegs

into the dark grass,

lacing the flap shut.

He made my dream tent

tight as a drum.

2

From inside,

the red stencilled chief

glowed on the calico.

He kept me company,

but I saw the gaps

holding him together.

The feathers he wore

were flames

staying away from him.

3

I loved the slant

of my father’s shadow

sloping over the walls

as he prowled around me.

He was my enemy tribe.

Caught,

he crept backwards,

his weightless shape

sliding off.

4

I didn’t come out.

He couldn’t fit in,

but he bent double

to talk treaties,

his face filling the entrance

upside down.

He spoke with a stern grunt.

He knew

the no smiling rule.

5

There were days

when the wind pulled

at my thin home

and I sat in a flapping

that loosened everything.

In winter, it lived

lightly under my bed,

a big rag

waiting for summer.

6

I think of that frail

shelter, the door

no one could knock on,

with the faded chief

and, I imagine,

the faint shape

of my father’s shadow.

All folded up

and put away for ever.

Ross Gillett lives in Ballarat. I came upon him when I was judging the Broadway Prize for the Poets Union in Sydney with Peter Bishop, quite a few years back now, and suddenly, out of the hundreds and hundreds of poems submitted, this poem floated up and made its presence felt. It's a quiet poem, but it's strong. I was curious as to the author, and well pleased to meet Ross, someone new to me and such a nice guy. He had been around for a bit but I just hadn't noticed him. He hadn't made his presence felt. He tells me he is on the boil at the moment and I am loving his new work. He reads his work with such precision and clarity with that extra bit of … well I don't know what it is. Maybe it is magic.

And a very very happy clappy birthday to Tuesday Poem which is now one year old!

Tuesday Poem - man with children by Ross Donlon

man with children

suddenly on my garden wall

a child's frowning face

her arms folded waiting

then a burst of jigsaw words

but about her hat

her black and orange hat and lost

oh well I say looking up and out no adult

where did you leave your hat where was it?

but no at the slow man a cat a lost cat

saturday afternoon with radio sport

talking to a welcome stranger child

the street and front yards empty

oh he'll come home for his dinner the cat

but now a second child scrambling up so

two cross puppets hanging on and puffing

a small girl and her smaller snuffling brother

reporter faces stern with breaking news no

the cat was there pointing near and nowhere

we all three look but all is innocent of cats

then a woman enters centre stage opposite

looks across I wave my spade say hi

call my name gabble black and orange

and of the children who came like the past

too far to shout four of my own

she looks away and down the street

makes a waving motion like sowing grain

I shoo my hands to make them fly

but later the sun and the sport disappearing

small steps scramble up shout found him

then run across the border road to safety

Ross Donlon lives in Castlemaine and runs the excellent Castlemaine readings in the Guildford Pub. They are a treat and a half and the open readers compete with a keen edge for the Castlemaine Cup. Which is always an egg cup and is sometimes of stunning incongruity. I have seen a Barbie egg cup handed out and I have seen it accepted with due gravity. These readings are tons of fun, packed to the rafters, and the standard of poetry is out there somewhere in the stratosphere. Ross is very inclusive and when funds allow he flies in poets from all over Australia. It's a hub for poetry, or a crux, or a choke point, or even, maybe a grand convergence.

But there is a lot more to Ross than this event which he husbands along. He's a poet. Sometimes his work is droll, and sometimes he essays more troubling subjects. I like his angles. I like his attention to craft. I find his work attractive.

One of his most attractive poems is The Blue Dressing Gown which recently won the Wenlock Festival Poetry Prize in the UK and Ross will be appearing at the festival in May. I hope to be able to post it here later in the year.

Tuesday Poem - Jun by Johanna Aitchison

Jun

one of the coldest things i did in japan was walk across the finger boards

of the green onion café and sit down on a bar stool and speak my lines

(including one super-polite word which i read from the back of my hand)

one of the most linguistically difficult things i did in japan was to memorise

how to say in japanese i am so sorry to hear about your son jun dying and

here is 3000 yen for flowers for his grave

one of the saddest things i did in japan was teach to jun’s photo on his empty

desk i asked the students to count the students in the class the students said

do we count jun

This poem has been haunting me since the terrible events in Japan. So Johanna has kindly allowed me to post it and share it.

I was running a loose sort of poetry night at Barista in Palmerston North while I was Visiting Literary Artist at Massey University last year. And Johanna came along which was great. Very cool poet girl that she is. She had spent three years teaching English in a Japanese fishing village so one of the first poems she read to us was Jun. Oh we liked it. We liked it very much. I suggested she enter it for the NZ Poetry Society competition because I was sure Viv Plumb would like it. And guess what, Viv Plumb did like it and it won. So that was all very cool.

When I say we liked the poem, of course we liked it feelingly. It is about a terrible loss and how to find the words to express your sorrow for the loss, and how to make a gesture which is appropriate, and then how to continue on living with that loss.

Johanna's second book – a long girl ago – was published by Victoria University Press.

http://www.victoria.ac.nz/vup/2007titleinformation/longgirlago.aspx

Tuesday Poem - Everything Is For A Very Short Time by Jennifer Compton

Everything Is For A Very Short Time

                                  

                       The Penguin Book of New Zealand Verse

                      Edited by Ian Wedde and Harvey McQueen

                                                    1985

There is no question of regret - I write hastily, in the shadow of my hand –

we left off loving - I'm not good I'm not peaceful I'm not wise – collapsing

out of Heaven – good intentions - other disappointments - such an ecstasy

of bewildered weeping – we had to be terrible news – in these terrible times.

Nothing innocent lasts long – the tragic scent of violets – in a broken vase -

her face moves like the face of a thief at the window – her face unclenches

like a fist – yes, the cold has come again – with a diffident explanation.

Theology and a patchwork absolute – the bare longing of the imagination -

treacherous as an avalanche poised above – and the white snake dead too -

the translucent hyperboles of art – saying Bravo Bravo to the Invisible -

eyes lit up by eager, cruel fires – as the taniwha is raised up from its den -

prodded into stuttering rage – his gnarled his dazzling his stubborn heart -

where the visions start – among immortal things – and all this in fidelity

to death - the iron bells toll – my story comes to its end. But picture me.

Cento from – Mary Ursula Bethell, Michael Harlow, Meg Campbell, Brian Turner,

Ian Wedde, Bill Manhire, Hilaire Kirkland, Allen Curnow, Tuini Ngāwai (Translation

by Kumeroa Ngoingoi Pēwhairangi), Tony Beyer, A.R.D. Fairburn, Christina Beer,

Elizabeth Nannestad, Sam Hunt, K.O. Arvidson, Denis Glover, Heather McPherson,

Murray Edmond, Alistair Campbell, Fleur Adcock, C.K. Stead, Janet Frame, Keith

Sinclair, Waikato (Translation by Margaret Orbell), M.K. Joseph, Kevin Ireland,

Charles Brasch, Vincent O'Sullivan, James K. Baxter, David Mitchell, Keri Hulme.

I am an absolute fusser I know but I felt quite devastated when this poem was published in the recent Poetry NZ and the layout was a dog's breakfast. Layout, the picture on the page, means a lot to me. But thank heavens for Tuesday Poem and I have redress.
Cento comes from the Latin word meaning patchwork quilt, and I like to write them from time to time when I am feeling inchoate. And because I live in Australia most of the time I like to dwell sometimes in the familiarity of the canon of NZ poetry. I spent hours reading through the book. It was a refreshment.
I also notice now that the book was co-edited by Harvey McQueen, who was a Tuesday Poet, who I didn't get a chance to know because he died soon after I joined. Vale Harvey. I loved browsing the book and taking what I wanted from it to tell my own story.