The Best Australian Poems 2017 Page 3

  for a piano recital on Cortula or Hvar.

  Ivan Pernicki—tho Ivan Pernikety

  I preferred at the time. (It got rained out,

  cancelled. We were going to go—the posters were all

  over the island: Chopin’s mazurkas, I’d like to think.)

  In

  what looks like a small urn—ceramic tho it pretends to be

  woven brush—

  (coppery orange)—is a perfectly round

  white or flesh-coloured ping-pong ball, with

  a face painted on it comically menacing & ghoulish

  with a black top hat: its amused eyes rest

  just above the urn’s rim. (It’s mounted on

  a toothpick, I know, so you could stick it in things

  (food? A cake?) & was given to us by Yuri’s

  then German girlfriend, Kathleen, from Dresden.

  We never met: we were overseas: but she liked us—

  liked Yuri—& left some presents for the house.

  There’s a clothes brush I never use. Some stickytapes,

  small staplers, a book cover—grey, proof copy—

  for Pam’s Fifty-Fifty. There it is again, nearby,

  in ‘full’ colour, & a vase from my childhood—

  & perhaps from Dad’s, or did he gain it

  as a wedding present?—

  a toffee-brown, with a scene painted on it—

  people sitting in an 18th century farm kitchen:

  tables, chairs, an open fire

  a bonneted woman sitting in a niche

  against the wall knitting: passing time, but busy.

  Back at the other end, near the plane, some

  rusched paper snakes—that I think Sally Forth

  gave me: they’re broken now but still look serpentine—

  in fact, even more so. They were attached to sticks,

  & almost invisible thread allowed them to move,

  snakily. There’s a Paul Sloan painting—an image

  on a postcard, behind the snakes (just below

  Burt et famille); there are two Singer sewing machine

  ‘light-oil’ containers, why? & a picture by Micky

  (Micky Allan), framed, of

  a curiously carefree footballer (a goalie, I always think)

  failing to make a save. (There are goal posts, pennants,

  an indication of a crowd, behind.) Late in the day—

  or maybe it’s early in the game, but it is

  how he intends to go on. Right near by,

  on the door of the clothes cupboard is a colour photo

  (from The Guardian) of a guy—on the wing—running

  full tilt, the ball (Rugby) clutched high

  against his chest, skinny, head thrown back

  ecstatic that—by his lights—he’s going to make it,

  just, in the very corner in a moment. It says,

  “David Humphreys scores one of Ulster’s two tries”

  He looks like he’s missing some teeth. You want him

  to succeed. The crowd are yelling & laughing.

  He could easily be bundled out, you would think,

  but he’s going to make it. I love it: human frailty

  simple pleasures. What else?—Beckmann

  (Lido). Martha Reeves & the Vandellas (beautiful

  in very funny pants) Richard Widmark—

  in a sixties suit & hat, narrow tie, pressed flat

  against a wall, expectant, gun out—two

  Joe Louis postage stamps, Stendhal, pictures by

  Kurt, & one by Sal, a photo of The Nips—formerly

  The Nipple Erectors—posed in the street, the lead singer

  in a zoot suit, slightly crouched, legs apart, the sole

  girl in the band amused at the boys’ antics

  stands very still, holds her guitar, smiles; a drawing I did,

  of a hat, for August 6th.

  I did it

  here in this room, under the fluoro, at the desk.

  There’s Rauschenberg’s

  chair—

  combined with the painting, & Seb & Mill

  & Mill’s baby, Hec.

  Ken Bolton

  Eleutheria

  Water spirit of small bowls

  beyond the bamboo curtain of my window

  a black bowl harbouring green shoots I have no name for

  maybe the small slick of water

  on the surface

  is enough for you

  maybe the few early morning raindrops

  are enough for you

  an ornamental tree spreading fan-like branches

  two small stone steps into a garden

  with room only for a few

  well-tended weeds (if everything non-native

  is a weed) sun water

  a few flourishes of stone

  I would have liked an ocean a tidal inlet

  a riverbed at least or clear creek

  cut like childhood between suburban allotments

  but where you glide is my renewal

  telling me a cup will do

  a line of silver in air

  to swim and glide and curl up

  within a water-drop

  in the tracery of moisture at the end of a leaf

  what this morning the birds harvest in the long

  silence of the skies

  Peter Boyle

  Forty-one degrees

  Almost summer, season of hot dry winds.

  Cooling off in Clovelly Bay, among

  sea-urchins and blue gropers, you enter

  a floating world, easy to forget

  out there it’s another heatwave.

  Outside my townhouse, men with hats

  and overheated brains are repairing

  the roof, damaged in last April’s storms,

  still leaking water.

  The garden needs watering. While rock-plants

  and veldt daisies may survive

  into our future desert, magnolias

  bloom fast and quickly die, browned flowers

  drifting onto unswept tiles. At dusk

  the air’s still warm, black cockatoos have fled

  with raucous cry, back to their cooler forests.

  In a neighbouring pond, frogs belt out

  loud mating-songs, secure for now, until

  developers arrive, to move the earth.

  Out there, it’s also a war on terror

  as jihadists and extremists take control

  and suddenly we know

  how, at any given moment,

  in a train carriage in London, a music festival

  in Paris, or a Lindt cafe somewhere

  life can be snatched away.

  Même pas mal, say the French, in solidarity,

  “Not even hurt.” But we all are.

  In this hot, shifting darkness

  I wish the rains would come.

  Margaret Bradstock

  The Shower Stall

  Wisdom does not follow conquest, although

  I tend to fall into thinking so. Sitting here,

  on a milk crate, watching the easy bounty

  of bore water sluice over her leg, holding

  the hose high above her knee, so the current

  cascades down slender cannon to film and bulb

  the swell of her fetlock and then rush away

  over coronet, hoof, concrete floor, to pool among

  blue top, farmer’s friend, toads, dragonfruit rot, wild

  raspberry bushes that house the black, spare

  fairy-wrens with their flash of slapstick orange.

  A slow sulphur of pain, low and new in my back,

  I rest my forehead against her belly, listen

  to the secret world of digestion

  and the ever present electrics

  of a prey animal, tranquillized for now

  by the water whispering to her hot leg,

  by my hand on her shoulder, but ever alert


  just below the surface, like a bream ready

  to dart for those insects that sit and skim.

  The infection is no worse, nothing has risen

  any further. The grass has grown too long,

  once the rains have stopped the tractor

  will come to slash the paddocks, until then,

  the weeds have won. Ants retreat down a fencepost;

  flushing the black pepper of grass seed out

  of the wound, I feel a shift in pressure

  under the iron hull of cloud before

  the next deluge. A magpie calls bright and clear in the lull,

  teaching its juvenile to hunt, to be,

  and a large butterfly appears, solitary, wings the dark

  grain of cedar or mahogany. The world ripples

  when I stand, unwell, I guess, but not enough

  to notice until I’m in the realm of the physical:

  paddocks, mud, boots, wheelie bin of chaff

  smelling sweeter than cakes never baked

  in my childhood oven. Autumn is around the corner

  with its mornings of mist and promise

  of dry days. The rain, now, when it comes,

  is cooler than I expect. It runs down my back

  in rivulets, soothes the burr of fever against

  my skin. I can no longer see the hills,

  all is valley now, all close in. The young

  magpie dips and jogs, staccato, across

  the round ring, looking for the worm.

  Lisa Brockwell

  The Night Coming

  I was thinking it was cold, the heater

  struggling against the draught,

  and that there was nothing I could say, how

  empty my mind was,

  but then looked up and saw you

  working in the paddock in the thin rain in your black

  jacket against the almost-evening

  of the trees

  with the white dog at heel

  and the four sheep grazing about you

  and the sounds, through the mist, of the cockatoos

  settling in the high branches,

  the woodshed in its winter sleep,

  the five wild ducks

  moving in single file through the grass.

  David Brooks

  Soft Targets

  the miracle pill

  is a sludge drench

  been given the slipperies

  at

  central railway

  & again

  at the airport check in

  a useless delay

  adds shadows

  to waiting

  so last week’s

  couple of hours

  at Eddie’s cafe -

  collards & patties

  cornbread & chops

  with friends

  from some own-private

  A-List,

  remodel sentimentally

  as memorable

  everything edible

  digested then combined

  in blood’s micro mix -

  dry cleaning fluid

  paint thinners

  toilet deodorisers

  benzene fuel drops

  ddt / literal poisons

  fish patties

  & sweet greens

  plus the poison I use

  to shrink my virus

  *

  I can only work

  the trap I’m in

  *

  on the plane

  everyone’s weeping

  at their tiny screens

  I weep for Janis for Amy

  for collards & for cornbread

  soft targets

  up in the air,

  softies

  you want to set

  a favourite diversion -

  describe

  a spiral staircase

  without using gestures

  but

  can’t play that

  more loving

  if I could

  even for a short time

  *

  lobes drop

  & droop

  almost to my collar

  my skull

  must be withering

  as

  I head

  towards my allotted truism

  Pam Brown

  compensation

  excitement a revised

  flyover to choctop

  boredom so let’s sip

  prosecco like white

  chiffon flutologists

  how those 3d-eed

  bubbles tickle your

  fancy i went to

  the wrong movie but

  had the right ticket

  for an emergency tax

  deduction i’m sorry

  i can’t remember the

  director’s name was it

  fellini, bergman, or tarantino

  everyone seems to rush

  out before the credits start

  to roll — i’m indebted to

  the reliability of an elevator

  even if the traffic lights insist

  on being stubborn the spring

  water is half the price across

  the rheumatoidal road they call

  it tank stream spa well did you

  bring your pack of loyalty cards

  Joanne Burns

  Minor Domestic

  Jacarandas luxuriate

  doused at dusk,

  a xylography of fringed leaves

  combs the barking

  light.

  Disabled elms sway,

  the hedges ungainly, wield

  to the drama of day.

  A license to renew, the house

  aphasic, tangled: missing

  marbles, a stapler,

  wedge sandals strewn.

  A half moon, flesh

  flapping from knuckle,

  like thumping, a detail:

  ruby spurts in her room. How a child

  dreams of sea-maidens

  in tidal streams

  while grown-ups carve

  out the silence.

  Michelle Cahill

  c’est l’homme

  for John Forbes

  you

  develope a style until

  it can say what you want you need it may

  take years and years

  of need a style

  is a bit like a life

  and then

  it comes together

  style book life

  and then

  much to your surprise

  this neat construction

  falls apart

  there is no book

  the life is not what was planned

  and the style

  seems hopelessly out of date and

  immortality a fading dream but

  the need

  turns out to be timeless

  and in the house there is

  some small drug or other

  to tide you over

  and the style

  takes a mini cooper and throws it

  down like a gauntlet

  and choosing a word is again

  the first mouthful of something

  brilliant and daring

  always perfect

  and you know

  despite all the stumbling about in the bushes

  the stubbed toes the dirt the broken fingernails

  there was a kind of twisted little track

  leading to the photo opportunity at the top of the cliff

  and from there you can see

  a mini cooper burning in the snow

  perfect

  Lee Cataldi

  another step away

  in homage to frank o’hara

  a fix of toby’s estate coffee on the footpath.

  baird has sold the education department

  & another heritage building:

  archival storage boxes re-labelled ‘wine glasses’

  past the museu
m of sydney—martin sharp’s

  tunnel of love—rows of ancestral totems

  names of the dead as mournful

  as first people circular breathing down at the quay

  the art of war is showing at the gallipoli club

  the bar girl winks her cubes

  languorously agitating a man slumps on the door

  of a soon-to-open restaurant

  around the corner gulls stir fry the air

  someone in a sari hurries

  towards the noodles of bridge street

  the sun is hot a silver statue stifles a sneeze

  outside customs house buskers on unicycles

  juggle flames & gimme signs

  at wharf six captain cook

  directs travellers to the bondi explorer

  the infirm struggle to board ‘the radiance of the sea’

  ferries turn beneath a jacaranda sky

  the harbour arch crawls with climbers

  in search of a mountain

  outside the mca rows of green tufts implanted

  on bald ground a baby magpie is fed

  shredded lettuce a man in a hoodie competes

  with ibises for poly-boxes in bins

  in the rocks five maseratis & two passengers

  dressed in ribbons & lavender fur

  halt all traffic without permission:

  the importance of filming their music video

  yellow helmets protect labourers from talkback radio

  it’s my lunch hour, so i go

  Julie Chevalier

  Kumera

  Wrap whole sweet potatoes,

  skin on, in foil. Place among

  the embers of coals – long after

  the chicken wings and satay

  have run out: the tender, orange

  flesh of the kumera – steaming

  in the night air, smoky skin

  peeled off in strips. One winter,

  in Kunming, ascending the path

  to the Dragon’s Gate, a woman

  standing watch over an oil drum.

  Scent of sweet potatoes cooking –

  men devouring its meat by the roadside.

  In the war it was all that would grow

  in the gardens, fertilised by shit.

  I ask my mother for rice porridge

  boiled with kumera. This thin gruel:

  the bright, cubed gifts of our survival.

  Eileen Chong

  Two Women

  Believe nothing she says. Provide her with a warm coat.

  Believe nothing she says. Give her a cigarette, and a light.

  Believe nothing she says. When her foot is trapped, stoop,

  wrestle with the slab until it yields. Then caress the mark.

  Wait for her, wait for her, wait for her two hours before

  you give up. Hear out the reasons that she gives with

  equanimity. There will be reasons, of course there are.