and the sting of citrus on tiny cuts
she never knew her fingers had
because I want her to know it is the glint
the sparkle of sun on fruit, the straightforward joy
of quenching thirst: lemonade, just
lemonade.
Spaces
Girl Talk
– for Liz
It was a lifetime ago
we were accepting drinks
asking for lights
playing games of Truth with strangers
who were definite maybes
which turned to yeses
and later to whys
who made good cries
and break-ups that hurt
then mixed tapes for cheering-up
and dancing wearing bleached blonde wigs
shit was there laughter
photographs and photographs of
open mouthed
closed eyes
hands on stomach
I could die
laughter
too many years for my fingers now
we sang someday soliloquies
and past unperfects of our parents
who we swore we’d never be like
while bikinis and bellybuttons
and no you are assurances
and confessions of condoms
still in the wrappers
leading to the occasional scare
before the sun soaked wrinkles
into my skin
girlfriend, we roadtripped:
state parks and cheap motels
sorry looking hitchhikers
fast food and fake names
and more photographs and more
photographs
because before it all
there was us
and then I went and found myself
by losing myself in this new country
I met a man
who gave me a son
and we have sunshine
when it rains
kiwi salads
are par for course
and you ask me why I try so hard
to live in the past
if the present is what
we’d always dreamed
my identity is bigger than Australia
I have tried to contain it
in a single-fronted cottage
near an old port town but it overflows into the Pacific
and slithers toward the Rocky Mountains
over through Shenandoah pine
and rests upon some colonial monument
glowing white in the dusk
I tried to sum it up
by amalgamating with my man
and giving birth to our son
but laid out and measured
it covers more ground than my wedding ring
is deeper than my purple stretch marks
decades old, not waiting
for its first tooth
or landmark silver
anniversary
you’re staring at the Big Dipper
getting on with life Up There
not needing me because you’re complete
in your ordered Northern sky
knowing firm where you stand
and me so very Southern Cross far
will I ever make snow angels
with our son
and watch them melt
with my man
because it cannot be
in Australia
where I think I know who I am
and how I have become this me
but still I pray that I remain
a bit of who I was back then
right or wrong
when I met you
at a concert on the college lawn
when we trespassed through our early twenties
ignoring signs clearly marked
when we’d hypothetically marry
because he was hot
secretly be disappointed to read negative
on the pregnancy tests
when Down Under
sounded like sex.
There’s some obscure station tuned in
it’s funky, instrumental.
Dresses and towels keep rhythm in the breeze
while the pumpkin patch grows like a maze.
Summer, yeah.
Adelaide has 2 seasons:
wet and festival.
Jumper-wrapped and ugg-enclosed, we live like squirrels
hording our acorns all winter long so when summer, yeah
when summer comes
we are starving
searching our closets for brightness and what feels light
and we come together without a plan or map to guide us
through the city’s streets and we celebrate with mango
dripping down chins, Riesling sploshing gold-painted glass rims, we celebrate, ravenously, the feast.
Emblazoned
– for Rebecca Locke
She is five
the strongest person I know.
The dirt of the oldest mountain
has cracked beneath her feet.
I think of the blood pumping in her chest
all covered by her fragile skin
how it floods her body
so when she jumps
the clouds move
animals prick their ears.
My niece laughs for all that is good.
She tells me a story about my brother
and laughs (because he is good).
He was always the funny one
so clever on his feet.
In her I see my brother.
So I listen.
And she loves me for it.
And I love her for it too.
My brother like my mother
smiles and cries and cries while smiling
so I want to tell this five year old girl
that her life will be huge
she will feel to the point of overflow
and gush without shame daily,
and when she needs friends surrounding her
she will never be alone.
Instead I reach for her body.
We form a most natural fit
as if we are used to each other
having only met twice.
She thinks I am nice and I make her happy.
I think she is beyond belief.
Don’t want to let go.
It is more than my brother and my mother
and my niece wrapped in my arms;
it is one of those things you don’t forget.
The things that are especially good
because they cannot last.
Spices
One cannot bite at soup
halfway round the world.
In Australia the soil screeches red
and chilies fill my eyes.
The sting of white wine
apples, sweet and sour sauce
bean sprouts bringing me back
to four hands, an oiled wok
pork, pumpkin, lips on my ear.
Here I need a scarf and sweater
even indoors
sipping leek soup.
At heights of burning dislike
I loved you more than mushrooms
more than Adelaide and airplanes away
more than lukewarm ale.
Lime leaves remembered
I’m licking my lips
thinking you’ve always been enough to eat
to ask for seconds still dripping of firsts.
Here is my pocket
a calling card, a pay phone
in the corridor.
You could be eating dinner now
something Asian in Australia
that sting again of a white wine washing
spices from your tongue.
Tell me you love me
you want to eat me
you cannot live a day without me
and together
we’ll burp—
my lunch
your dinner
our love our love our
sweet and sour love.
Memorise
Those days we flew, occasionally swooping
to dip our toes in grassy puddles –
the shiver at the back of my neck
sometimes I still feel .
Those days, the drinks
were tri-weekly bottles of Sav
the Baileys and backgammon in the middle of our bed
When did we sleep?
Those days we soared on love
lived off little more than extended blinks
too busy with the view
from three hundred metres:
waves pushing inward on rocky land masses
our lifestyles evolving
the photosynthesis of Eucalyptus leaves.
Overnight low of 34, but the breeze…
And after it was over we lay on the swag
dreamlike, discussing the happy face cloud
how one illuminated a seahorse
across the 11pm norwestern sky.
Easy prey
– the hottest day in 70 years
a power outage silencing our space
candles and some satellites
and then there is I love you.
Those clouds, how they claimed us
moving above and over our bodies
by the breeze that dried our heat-wave sex.
There was lightening too.
It was like writing a poem.
Or reading one.
An exceptional one.
Collective
We’ve formed this circle that morphs with each breath
weight shifting from leg to leg
with the rocking of the sarong-draped pram.
There is somewhere to be but the man in the middle
holds a chair in one hand, a unicycle in the other.
His parents must have encouraged greatness
said it’s okay to talk to strangers
let him run everywhere.
Five minutes have passed and we’ve morphed to smiles
so now we’re touching shoulders.
His unicycle zig zag is like a child’s mad scribble
on the city’s pavement floor.
We answer questions about ourselves
lay bare our imagination and shout out scenarios.
Friends and lovers wait at cafes
checking mobiles, texting other people.
We morph to applause and sounds that escape
our parted lips as he balances a chair
in the palm of his hand
still a single tyre.
I think briefly how I balance daily
and never a crowd gasps.
And when he’s done, we’re done—
we dissolve into the walking crowd
our circle now a series of impossible dots.
Why Painting is Like Geometry
At university in Music Theory I learned about mathematics.
Between binge drinking and finding my soul
I discovered the inevitable:
inspiration doesn’t become creation without fine tuning.
I bought a Dave Brubeck CD and listened while I studied
while I strove to write poems without counting syllables
while I ate two minute noodles and drank six packs of beer
while I tried to sleep to my roommate fucking
in time to beats of jazzed up fives
a coed from the second floor.
I memorised melodies and had to do equations
and questioned my vocation as would-be poet
because Take Five wasn’t a stroll down an alley
of garbage cans and scurvy cats, the woman in red
a hobo whistling, a man in a suit with an alto sax;
it was perfect numbers from fractions
with order and reason
and from it came rhythm and song.
I wanted to be that woman in red, that very sax
because I wanted to believe that magic lies within the muse
and the artist and the sound and the word and the pen.
I wanted to heed the creed of art for art’s sake.
I was eighteen.
I only just passed Music Theory
then ascended to drinking bourbon and cokes
lost my virginity at a party.
That boy dumped me in two week’s time
while the bourbon took turns with cheap red wine
and I wrote poems on life-til-now
while others took notes in Art 101
on why painting is like geometry.
before noon
backyard table
water bottle and phone
The international dateline confuses calendars, friends
and relatives (who I take less lightly)
so they all have an excuse.
Here’s to calling card expirations
and the baby’s almost due
and I didn’t get home until late last night.
Here’s to my forever forgiving
simply just forgot.
But know this:
on my birthday
here so far
from the reaching
Blue Ridge Mountains
of my old backyard
I am waiting.
The telephone is on the outdoor table
and this day is hot,
like the summer tried to sneak away
got caught red sweaty handed
spilled all over my body.
I wish the scent of the ocean three kilometres away
for my son to sleep a full two hours
to tan myself bare
thinly layered sunscreened skin
wisteria my thick fortress.
Sweet family and those pictures of party hats
children with vague names
brown and green corduroy clothes
of the mid 70s we all wore –
remember this day.
Colour me into your latest photo
and stick it on the fridge.
Undomesticated university girls
the river dudes with holey jeans
my two year tangle mistake
who shared my tiny bed –
our drinks were always raised to the camera’s lens
so raise your drinks now, beyond your horizon –
it’s midnight your time
and I’m before noon
water bottle ready.
I wish for the dj playing soul
to keep on spinning until I rise
as I wish for accents like my own
home gently blowing the roundness of the letter r –
here’s to diminishing time zones
music, oceans, telephones, the sun.
Here’s to simply one more day.
Sophia Street Ghost Stories
– for R.P.
We sat beading on the couch
necklaces that would carry colour
to our vegetarian cosmetic-free skin.
No secret we lived in a morgue from Civil War days
and this south of the bloody Mason-Dixon Line
so the patter of running feet that followed the sound
of breaking glass didn’t shock, but still our eyes
widened and brightened to light bulbs.
In fact it was the light bulb that intrigued us.
The way it broke so the middle remained
and the surrounding sides had smashed to the ground
all over the ground so we had to put on shoes.
That was Virginia and now you’re in Scotland
while I have a family in Australia.
Nearly twenty years later I understand the permanency
of the Sophia Street Ghost.
I see how quickly our feet have shuffled
how loud was the noise as we stomped over the earth
how fast we blinked one scene to the next
how our bodies transcended space so easily
even laden with flesh and burdened by bone
carrying all of that air in our lungs.
We lived with that ghost on a daily basis
expecting the most unexpected reminders
and spine-tingle smiled when our own bedrooms
had been its canvas of quiet communication.
I never thought then if it wanted to be in that 3 storey home
for a hundred years, if it wanted to live somewhere else.
We write to one another about meeting in the middle:
a holiday in Greece between Scotland and Australia
while just over the Atlantic lies the Sophia Street Ghost.
I click at the keyboard:
perhaps in the end it is death
that will ground us.
Press “send” to the satellites.
Leaving the Adelaide Hills
– for Tim Sinclair
We were talking poetry in between spoonfuls of mousse
while the winter sun warmed the floor that nearly froze
the night before and I think it was then I commented on
the kitchen table as the cosy spot. You said you feared
not feeling free to walk to the shop for a carton of milk
in these very same uggs.
New York gave you insight into rhythm and rhyme,
scraped heels on black boots made of thick leather
and a knowledge of the subway system.
She made you an Other
and did it so well
you fit her like a puzzle piece.
So what did I think?
That you would return to your kitchen table
like a cat to a window to soak up sun?
Next it will be Sydney.
I do long for you to claim the space:
find a regular sushi bar, a favourite op shop
where you grow to greet the old ladies by name
patronise a local serving Toohey’s on draught
pine away for Coopers Pale Ale
and when it happens – Sydney, the milk –
will you hands-in-pocket walk straight backed
with your city slicker confidence to the corner store
wearing hole-worn uggs?
Owning comfort, giving it a name
calling on your Bridgewater roots?
So much depends upon ugg boots.
Two Women Staring at the Stars