Poems

Lizz Murphy’s ‘The Woman in Blue’

from Bitumen Psalms

the woman in blue
all weathers
walks
like it’s killing her

ponchoed walker
orange flame spiralling
through long grass

she blows a trail of smoke
gently taps her ciggie
they keep her company
ash flakes float

the blushing moon
her cigarette burns

Natalie Cooke’s ‘Bird Song’

from 100 Poets

Last year I began a list of birds at my window
recording their whims and peregrinations, and my own 
imperfect knowledge (and lack of application).
Currawong, it starts boldly, cuckoo-shrike, wattlebird
before some sort of thornbills (?) – all brown…
Perhaps they’ll return.

I dug out a field guide, dived into descriptors, 
compared fuscous and rufous, ratite and struthious,
then sounded out dihedral, superloral, nidifugous.

I composed a silent chorus of plaintive warble, 
falling reels and froglike croaks 
with a counterpoint of whip-crack
thin tinkling, scolding notes.

Paper’s a pied piper; I twitched adjectives
for hours, staked out nouns, pished verbs,
deaf to my surroundings, tail-up in words.

Then this evening three currawongs—
all black against the reddening dusk—
called a question through the glass
and I looked up and 
heard.

Jean Kent’s ‘IN MY MOTHER’S HOUSE’

from The Language of Light

My nieces and nephews are chasing me up the wall. 
In my mother’s house they are mustered
year by year, just as I was: A.J.C. 30/8/63 
(five foot two) pencil brands in paint. 

Heels tight against the floor ankles strained 
careless as shanghais they aim themselves up 
quiver as their grandmother
flattens curly heads with the carving knife 
& pins them like chrysalises to the wall. 

(1963. My two brothers straight as arrows 
shoot past me, threatening the ceiling where possums 
and cobwebs hide the bullseye. Our first year
in this house. I had done all my growing.
I had left it climbing with small sharp feet in the houses 
which came before. My brothers with their eyes on the sky 
stuck their fingers to skin-thin balsa, floated model 
aeroplanes over their beds and over the paddock
of palely shooting carnation-leaved stock feed; 
talked of piloting jets, Mathematics permitting. 
I began to look horizontally         as far
as America in full colour copies of Life:
John F. Kennedy with a fatal, choirboy grin.)

1981. Up the wall now delicate as insects
my nieces and nephews leave their marks. 
Somewhere in the flat distance, patterns of houses 
like nomads’ tents — at the heart of each
one single pole        a ladder
of wounded paint. In the steamy dust 
the deserts we planned to cross wait still. 
Memories, slick mirages, blind us. Here all our lives 
settle back to this: on a wall, marks
of moths’ feet, reaching for the sky.

Philip Hammial’s ‘Getting Clean’

from The Beast Should Comply

Filthy because first, I fell from a family
of fifty. No explanation save Fusion, that it fed
the lilies with death until time
became thin, brittle, expired in a long, pathetic
stouche. Stouche: run aground — blue canoes (why
blue? — as an antidote to the narrator’s filth) are picked up
by painted warriors & carried into a dense forest, never
to be seen again, a gratuitous image whose only purpose
apparently is to disrupt the flow
of the narrative. Stouche: how long
can a breath last? Eighty seconds? Ample time
to let them pass. How many were there? Too many
to count. Mares or stallions? Couldn’t tell
with all the dust. Should I make them blind, add
an unnecessary complication to a narrative
already burdened with one superfluous image (blue
canoes)? Stouche: a stampede
into a feast where the rationing is exceptionally
strict that sends them flying as befits a narrative
that extols the pieta-like austerity of a mother & son
huddled together on a drifting raft (Niagara thundering
in the distance) who can’t get over the fact that the tombs
(with which both shores are lined) are so ... prophetic, so
stouche as prayers for salvation are answered only
to run afoul of the Law. Too supernatural, this
phenomenon, there could be a panic. Clear the court
of spectators! (&, by extension, the streets of filth
with a water cannon). Stouche: clean
because last, the narrative reduced (by a neat
solipsism) to the narrator, that family of fifty
of no further use.

Anna Couani’s ‘Small Wonders’

from Small Wonders

growing up in Australia

turn the corner at the pub
pass the drinkers sitting
in the north morning sun
like a chorus
constantly watching

the bearded lady sitting outside
The Skull’s house
helping out on the weekend
selling the bicycles he repairs

the Israeli bag sellers in the market
hearing Hebrew as you pass
with the occasional English word
“Wednesday” for example

with Chinese students, more likely
the English word might be “bullshit”

cycle past a friend’s garden
papaya next to the olive tree

a big bush of rosemary, roses
the little red flowers of the
Chinese lantern bush

drop by Clipper café for breakfast
“Hey I come to Glebe for breakfast
at Clipper! I love Glebe!”
peek in Gleebooks window
full of beautiful book covers

she runs through the suburb
in her mind
scanning over the hills
like on Google maps, satellite view

lived there, lived there, lived there
each address like a portal
opening onto those memories
grouped like episodes
the flat with a studio
the flat with dark blue walls
where she taught herself all those
art techniques
way back
the feminist house

women with shaved heads in
the big backyard
the new flat with a fabulous balcony
facing the highway on the opposite shore
of the harbour
watching the car headlights cascading down
the hill
collating a magazine round a big
temporary table

each place so different
down at street level

Rae Desmond Jones’ ‘Decline and Fall’

from Decline and Fall

i hate them
the truth is out! & they hate me. 

them, the barbarians in baseball hats,
twisting in chairs lined up in artificial order,
and carving their loathing on the tabletops. 

do you know why the roman empire fell? i ask.
who cares? a boy giggles.
that is the reason, i say. 

you are old & fat, they say.
they are young & fat, I don’t say.
because i don’t want them to get healthy

they can stay ugly and stupid so i can despise them. 

why envy the awkward root they didn’t have
or their perfect wet dreams pearling
on the television screen? 

outside the aluminium rimmed window
a crow strops his beak against a tree trunk

so that it will be sharp to dig
soft white worms from the dark earth.
i yearn for that brutal freedom.
the students resist my will although their heads bow,
broken for a second. 

the room constricts us all.
i almost say get out.
go back to your bad videos & your hopeless dreams:
be unemployable.
daub graffiti on trains
& put as many needles in your arms as you want.
die if it seems romantic. 

let there be war between us.

Greg McLaren’s ‘A House’

from After Han Shan

I see a darkness above the houses,
above the light at their windows
catching in the eaves.
We are driving away

in your old car, its rattling door
letting the cold in.
The night is a wide space,
entering everything.

You stop, we crunch on gravel
by the side of a road,
looking back at the soft glow
behind the hills and the dips

the river sits in. We regret
the quiet city. For years
you’d hoped to find your brother there.
He never showed.

You explained the mauves and grey-greens
of your grandmother’s jacaranda
and the gum-forest past her back fence.
I am longing, I think, for a house.

I go out into its back yard,
tired of writing another
letter home. The sun is low
in the flat sky, between the trees. 

The horizon takes on the colour
of bruised jacaranda flowers.
A car door opens and closes,
a light goes on in the house next door.

Kit Kelen’s ‘The Sociology of Paradise’

from A Pocket Kit

First I came through a hoop of flesh.
I didn’t jump I swam.
There was an endless mud plain
and another storm coming.
Rain beat the rice shoots
green out of the soil.
Millions were huddled
round the still ether. 

The century dragged on.
I missed the boat, swam out
to the island. And the air
was still in the sun’s quarter
and the half a sky
where waves could have been.
The moon washed up
where the tide rusted into the sand. 

Cars came out of the twentieth century.
Coca Cola came ashore, washed
on the hard live shell of paradise.
A coconut fell out of nowhere
onto my child’s head. I didn’t stumble. 

There were stars and bars everywhere.
I could hear the west crackling through
looming shadows of bliss. 

Back-country hills were dense with trees,
dissidence, notches for climbing up.
And curled into a noose of straw
the disappeared hung, swaying
– invisible burden of paradise. I jumped
through a hoop of gold. I had
the ring of confidence then
and a flag the colour of mud. 

Helicopters filled up the sky.
At lunchtime and late in the afternoon
when the noise came
birds shifted forward in a straight line
black, palm to palm, fifty metres.
Then when they came back
there was nothing the wind could move.
Trees clung to a rock in the sea. 

On dry land I had a good steady job
in the flyspray factory. They paid me
in cigarettes so naturally I took up
smoking. The mist from the nozzle
formed up a halo
to martyr the very air.
You couldn’t call it a leak.
It was more like missile testing. 

Each day here proud of the fallen,
brainless slaughters to glory in.
The earth makes up a place for each.
The new rice sings from the earth.
The colour of the mud in our veins
is a flag billowing over a hoop
of bright gunmetal: the welcome mat.
I didn’t jump I swam. 

Beth Spencer’s ‘We Are the Rejected’

from The Party of Life

The rejected in love 
come down to sigh in the park 
at Glebe Point

The rejected drive down late at night
crammed in a yellow two door sedan
radio blaring, 
arms flailing out of windows
hair a mess, mascara running

We shout 
'We are the REJECTED!'
across Blackwattle Bay

and wait

and the shark coloured water 
creaks against the bank
'Hmmm... Hmm...'
like a $90 shrink.

because it is comforting to be something
even if it's only this

and up on the other side of the bay
the cars cruise by
headlights politely averted

But we are everywhere,
in the dark in the bushes, on benches
kneeling or leaning against the white rails
resting our foreheads against lamp-posts
bumping them against fences (boop, boop)

As dark falls on Glebe Point
you can hear the rustling of the 
grievers, the decieved
listen to the
'Hmmm… Hmmm…' of the bay
and see the cars drive away
(the unrejected, with places to go, busy schedules)

The chimney stacks:
(no comment)

The skyline glitters 
out of reach
like a big birthday cake
for someone's party that the rejected are
too dejected to go to
(and weren't invited in the first place)

We are the world's nocturnal shuffling creatures,
hunched shoulders, long thin overcoats
pale lined faces.

Short, fat, balding, beautiful, long-legged,
smart, witty, dull and mean. 
We come in all types.
Shuffing through the trees, 
leaning against the white rail,
knocking our heads againts lamp-posts
doing hand-stands in the dark, 
avoiding the dog shit

'We are the rejected,' we shout and we hear the echoes
and sighs all around us in the bushes and on the benches,
a woman is kneeling at the white rail.

'Hmmm… Hmm…' says the water.

'We are the rejected!' we shout.

'Not my problem' say the cars going up the hill 
(somewhere).

We are the weepers, the left
the ones with
big question marks in our eyes
the ones still hoping.

Gnawed fingernails, chewed hair.

'We are REJECTED!'

'Hmm… Hmm…' says the water.

We are the rejected.

Richard James Allen’s ‘Birthplace’

from Fixing the Broken Nightingale

someone in your family once read my novel
or maybe studied it at school
I found an old copy
an early Penguin edition
down behind the back row of books
at the bottom of your bookcase
the front cover was ripped of
but I could tell they had appreciated it
because the title was pencilled
about thirty times on the front page
there was a recipe for fruit cake
in the blank space between sections one & two
scrawled down the margins of pages 126 & 223
were the departure & arrival times of the North Coast Mail
& across the back fap
the names of fourteen people
who used to be alive
frozen in a line
like sitting ducks in a shooting gallery