our children might inherit, we mix up the tenses, sometimes
she is here and sometimes gone,
then we slide our arms underneath her, pass a length of
white silk, under and over, and again, the act of shrouding
stands us outside of anything we have ever done together;
elastics, the hand-clapping games, sliding up and down the back
end of the bath to make waves flood the bathroom, acting out
the Chiko-roll ad, biting tough batter in slow-mo mouthfuls
our acrobatic and dance routines, their critical, perfected finales
all of these acts of sibling co-operation, establishing timing,
rhythm, hand-eye finesse
wait outside the rosewood double doors while we stand on either
side of a table to do this for the first and only time
Tracy Ryan (b.1964)
Lost Property
To be alone in the wide room
in the house’s crooked elbow, turning point
for extensions as the family grew
and grew — and grew — to be alone in the one room
nobody needed now, though it might be resumed
like land, for guests or blow-ins, at any moment,
without notice (and that was part of
the appeal, the very tenuous feel of the place) to play there
at five or six: to be immersed though not safe among the things
that preceded you, immediate and limitless,
everything already there, the way the world went on
before you were thought of, that flux, and your small-child
leisure for introspection while others shinnied trees for the same
sense of endless outlook, here,
in this would-be attic brought down to earth, whose breath
was frosty as Mother Shipton’s well, holding the tossed refuse
of older siblings, stages shrugged off: limp tutus, pink as dropped
gum blossom, too big, though you stepped
into them and stood, as if in a fairy ring you might animate;
satin and tapshoes, toe-shoes from a sister’s long-gone bit part
in Hans Christian Andersen, poems called Off The Shelf
that you avidly grabbed for your own, puzzled
at faded marginal doodles in real ink;
dark ocarina whose holes you could never master,
bakelite cracked, spookily fake-organic,
as if a new kind of reptile had laid it,
and a distant, shadowy instrument, lipped, where fingers should sit,
with verdigris your father later chastised you for rubbing –
an oboe perhaps — resisting your grip, but venting
a slow corruption in you as descant,
its distant kin in this vast orchestral silence:
strange octagon you toyed with that would never quite close or open,
squeeze box, little lung resisting pressure, push and draw, your hands
impeded from fully parting or meeting, stretching
in musical secretion, cat’s cradle, ectoplasm,
crimped membrane so vulnerable to puncture,
it made you wince, lantern-thin but giving sound
for illumination. At last: harmonica, cupped, bracketed but not
for all that an afterthought, heart of the whole unpeopled
space, for the way it moulded to your own small wheeze
and gave it a different life, if a pleasure to the player only,
pleasure to make your mouth water, metal, felt, and papery
velvet, though your brother might shudder
at the old spit he imagined pooled there,
to you it was honeycomb,
striving to isolate each note, then giving up,
as if you had many voices at once, speaking in chords,
and could make yourself heard.
First Burn
All day she has pitched dry grass, Hardyesque,
perched on the stack, helping to raze the block
in a race against shire deadlines: fire risk.
Only her colours are wrong — curls a stark
hedge in English autumn, young fragile skin
dead-of-winter white. But she will work
to feel she’s useful, wanting to fit in,
all my cautions thrown to the easterly,
hot from the desert. I’ve done all I can —
this is the point, the moment beyond me
for which we’ve struggled, locked like Gabriel
and Jacob, though the outcome may not be
a blessing. She is tall and capable,
strong on the outside — surely that’s enough.
To look at her now no one else could tell
what tinder, what touchwood she was made of.
By evening there appears a subtle glow
upon her shoulders, imprinted as if
someone had held her fast; by morning so
reddened and furious she is aflame
with reproaches, and cries: You made me go
to England and then you made me come home.
Non-sequitur, she knows, but all the same
I am the mother, I must wear the blame.
Jackson (b.1965)
suck faint amity
At the end
the days are long and hot
and the nights are long and cold.
The only plants left
repel tongues, survive
fire. The only animals left
The few remaining humans, knowing
no more, suck faint amity from the bitter needles, greyish
trees, grey creatures and grey
and ochre rock.
Earthface thrusts out flare-flowers: one more vanity:
howl-azure, shriek-cerise, desperation-gold.
am I not?
in stark black lines on white
the cane toad
with lumps and warts drawn as rounds and discs
inked eyes
a curve as a hint of tongue
comes out of the night
with its croak: am I not?
am I not, too,
made for some
place?
The Antipoet (Allan Boyd) (b.1966)
fly in fly out fly in fly out
fly in fly out fly in fly out
and she’s on another swing
a roundabout of airports
another pilbara narrative
racking up the qantas points
at the exit seat, inside a novel
pindan fingers
pindan boots
fly in fly out fly in fly out
siren, rumble of blast
iron hills to rubble
at the next cat one shutdown
we evacuate ourselves
in a debt cycle
for a new house i’ll never live in
a boat I’ll never float
and fly in fly out fly in fly out
six years of missed birthday cake
skype in a donga on mothers day
can’t talk with a mouthful of flies
on the tarmac haze, jet fuel stench
at hi-viz horizons, the bus at 5am
another DandA test before dawn
one beer per man, open can
in the wet mess, scrolling screens
never drunk enough
to fly in fly out fly in fly out
in my box the
flint-eyed mirror
says get more sleep, smile
inside these thinnest walls
sounds of next door snore
another breath
to the beat of the air-con
the tv red glow, fridge hum
waiting for the alarm’s pierce
fly in fly out fly in fly out
now lost in suburban streets
shopping centre carparks
p
eeling products from shelves
staring at labels, empty trolley
missing the truck hum
until she’s on another swing
fly in fly out fly in fly out
Lucy Dougan (b.1966)
The Chest
There is this attic memory for me,
a chest that stood at the bottom of the bed
and haunted us. A man made out of cloth rose from it:
spectral husband, killer, stained bride
or another self — unknown, uncountenanced.
All my childhood threats lay coiled in that chest,
ropes that led a snake dance down to other worlds.
I should not climb in or I will be found,
a blue child clad in rotting lace.
I should be sensible and never shut myself in,
even though at times, believe me,
I yearned to be strange cargo
showing the whites of eyes through openings,
to wake at sea to a jolting cold and foreign voices.
Beyond the chest hung curtains patterned with an orchard
that cast a pied light made for wanderings.
I packed myself away with the stiff grace and sweat of tissue relics
and proclaimed — stowaway, chrysalis, cats for drowning
— that when I burst out I would not be me.
It was in this room that my father warned my mother not to stand
against the drapes for fear of calling up the types who slithered
on the smooth earth below or listed in clumps of rushes
further in the darkness by the river,
barely human, don’t think to call them so,
and where my mother had told my sister and I about blood.
I hid in the chest after that and dreamt about this new dark river —
the force of how it ran and how to hide it.
This morning I stretched out of myself in bright winter light
and remembered the gift of a glory box from the father that I did not know.
Sturdy as a small coffin, it found me close to his own death.
What it should have held — voile for weddings, the sweet smell of swaddling clothes —
has been an empty ache to it. Oh life spun around me alright
with all its attendant wrappings but never so tenderly
as the word glory speaks — put on glory raiment like a king or queen,
those glowing souls of the ones who went before
and kept things shining and folded.
Or there is a word in his own tongue for glory box — lettuccio — one to wake to
far off out at sea, borne away in a self unknown, uncountenanced —
which is a kind word that belongs to boundless days
in orchard light when all the room contracted to a chest.
Close it up then. But first or last just one more thing —
a man stands at the head of another open chest
and places his hand upon the heart, feels the solid pumping life of it,
a small fist that hits and hits again into his palm.
At season’s change, the dark month, I lift the lid and curl inside,
my heart, peculiarly, opening out.
Mannequin Brides
Queens of King Street,
with backs to the harbour,
they style stiffly,
wise as dolls.
Like all good oracles the brides speak in silken riddles.
Strange sequined mirrors,
they have grown genuinely reflective.
By some art they have climbed
outside their game of statues
and their veiled souls billow out above
the mortals down below.
Those passing by begin to stride
as they catch the beat of their own lost vows,
the grave words they gave up or never spoke.
They sense this only sideways:
an agitation of white, of fallen petals
to brush from the eye with rice.
Perhaps the brides will forsake the itch
of borrowed lace for the tat shops instead,
being careful not to wed
legends like Mine Forever.
They are escaping
the most important day of their lives.
David McCooey (b.1967)
Pink Moon
I was staying in a Tuscan bed-and-breakfast.
On my second day, a young Italian couple
approached me, shyly asking if I was
Nick Drake’s sister. (I never know how
people find this out.) ‘Yes,’ I answered,
‘I’m Gabrielle Drake,’ not adding that I was
once the more famous. In my silver catsuit
and purple wig I was Lieutenant Ellis,
Moonbase commander on UFO. Three
decades later and Nick was the one having
a documentary made about him. It was
sad and beautiful, just like Nick, who’d
thought himself such a failure, especially
after Pink Moon made its appearance.
As if making the apocalypse sound like
a shepherd’s lullaby wasn’t enough …
The Italian couple were endearingly solemn,
but as always, at such moments, I didn’t
know what was required of me. I looked
across the expensive pool towards the green
of the hills and said, ‘I think Nick would have
loved this.’ They looked at me like I was an alien.
Gabrielle Everall (b.1968)
Stink
Stink
Perfume is all
that unites lovers
and disintegrates
identities
From ‘metaphor’
to ‘metamorphosis’
perfume harbours decay
and unified with the other
turns decay back into
perfume
Do you ever wonder
if your scent can be smelt?
She is odious
her bad odour, her disrepute
have the power
to strip paint off walls
the beaten housewife
mops her house with perfume
her worries absorbed in atomisation
she liked to buy
cheap imitation perfumes
something so flowery
it could double
as a defence
against rape
she wanted to attract
a man on a date
instead she caused sinus, eye
throat inflammation, migraines
loss of motor control
impairment to the kidneys, liver
and central nervous system, cancer
desir de femme
tabu
admit
hypnotic poison
allure
l’air du temps
unzipped universe
why don’t they
just call perfume
flowers of evil?
the privileged gaze is
ephemeral
while the history
of the world is a
nose
when I smell my beloved
my body levitates toward him
his scent turns the sun
into a wallflower
a bath
washes away
my evil
Baudelaire is
swimming in it.
Concord as you get off the Concorde
Your grand entrance into Studio B ---
it’s good to see
your interplanetary slit-like eyes
Never sure if your
behaviour toward me
is punishment or reward.
When will you give me my gold watch?
Adymson: I can’t be here for long.
Werthergirl [deadpan]: why, c
os you’ll be in breach of your
restraining order?
You have the ability of my mother
to know exactly what’s happening for me
riding easy on the amusement park of my allegiance
see you in another half decade
you’re still part of my emotional memory
only ECT could eradicate you.
Amanda Joy (b.1970)
Snake Skin, Roe Swamp
Shedding skin of a snake, will
loosen first at the lips, retract
backward over bluing eyes
dull crown, those sorcerous jaws
Resistance is needed, seeking
friction of rock, chafe of grass
scour and scrub of brown balga
It braces its body and slides out
Slipped fishnet of bubblewrap
mingled with a streaky mandala
of divested paperbark, becomes
my discovery, being its past
I tease open a brittle end, puzzle
my arm inside, until it is sheathed
to the elbow, ghost eyes puckering
my skin. My pulse its unsealed centre
Vestiture of rain spittle in my hair
A cool trickle slides inside my collar
I tear the delicate mesh pulling it off
in what becomes a deluge
God of fragmentation, refusing
to keep things whole, coming
to me later. Showing again
that repetition might simply be
a lack of attention to detail
John Mateer (b.1971)
Ghost Wedding
for Hoe Fang
The boy was playing in his parents’ room,
creeping under their bed in that first game
of disappearance. He found the shrine
his mother hid there: oranges, joss sticks, a photo.
He asked:
‘Who is in that picture, that little girl?’
‘Your sister. She died before you were born.’
He was happy in newly revealed siblinghood, his playmate,
deep in the familiar Unknown, a ghost.
~
Over the years his mother worried for her daughter’s
happiness. She hired a matchmaker to seek
someone suitable, someone who had also died young,
who could be a good ghost-husband. He was found
across the border, on the Mainland, that side
of the Chinese Mirror. Eventually they were married,
making both the mothers happy.
~
Then years later, when he and his mother