The Best Australian Poems 2016 Page 4

  oblongs of card has a sprig of pressed flowers glued

  to its back twelve hand tinted images of various

  iconic scenes: deep and rich as illuminated dreams;

  the flowers’ colours have faded the tissue interlaid

  turned brown but mostly the shapes of the tiny leaf

  sprigs are firm and resolute; one flower has lost its

  leaf and stalk but its red petals reveal a patient

  heart the vanished stalk has left a pale

  imprint it endures, this tenacious ghost —

  as a three year old i visited bill’s rose bay home

  in a block of flats in balfour road a name that

  matters like allenby street in the picture of old

  tel-aviv underneath the main inscription he had

  written, now in purple ink more & more & still more -

  of all you wish yourself i’m trying to keep this

  poem simple just ‘flowers from the holy land’ like

  an intact reverie but this old gift of a book leans

  unprotected never gathering dust on a poetry shelf

  two down - i suddenly note - from ‘selected

  poems of darwish’, born 1941, galilee

  where did his ‘carnations’ grow ~

  Joanne Burns

  * The carnations image comes from a Mahmoud Darwish poem I Have Witnessed the Massacre

  Car Lover

  It can be healing to walk the vacant streets

  of these suburbs, over tree-buckled pavements,

  the ground cicatrised, I’m a proverb of missing

  woman with tablet, with handbag evidence.

  It can be therapy to loiter in the park, streetlamps

  glow with yellow discernments though V8 utes

  may be scarce, the road rule is swift and strobic.

  The sky is gagged but I’m a sentence in heels.

  Trees camber, pencilled in mist, row by row.

  Cars gear in/out of driveways front or rear-ended

  with gear-stick discovery. A frogmouth cautions me,

  the rose-lit church grounds pray for my flesh.

  Consider me slumped cold against a brick wall.

  What device pedals thought’s accessories?

  Cars sing hosannas for the freeway, pulsing

  nocturnal. I improvise, I turn like leaves rasping.

  Dumped by sleep’s apparatus, there is a girl who

  beckons from below the liquidambar. I’ve heard

  her chafing. Bring an ice pick. Send a coupé to

  abduct me, my bones whistle of that other Spring.

  Michelle Cahill

  Cloaca Maxima

  Any, every, thing that was exposed

  goes underground and is washed into the Tiber.

  This is what some people do

  with faces, burying. You see them,

  the heavy ones, chests like rivers, their heads

  bowed down with great

  antlers of thought invisible.

  After many seasons, the fronts of their bodies

  terribly developed to carry them.

  Venus of the Drains, the woman with the scum

  at the corners of her mouth who talked

  for a long time, scarred by burning, perilous thin,

  then told us we had made her day.

  It is seen, what should not be seen. It is I sees it.

  Shameful, to feel so heavily the shame

  of others—to hear and echo

  that note always waiting in the voice to be sung.

  Do I make it happen

  to her by having

  face and chest that wash with red?

  Elizabeth Campbell

  Axe derby

  Never were knuckle-men.

  Choked up on planks

  of smoke, they haul

  towards the peplum, stabbing

  back at time, splinters of it

  flip like cars. Rolled sleeves,

  knees cooked, the rousie

  is flirting with her broom, a blonde

  with criminal simplicity with

  historical truth we can detoxify

  a poisoned planet. Now

  they’re descending the spirit heap

  dribbling pinkies along fair knotty thighs.

  Children are returning to pick up the butts.

  Still the brunette is caving in the face

  of time, is making herself a living

  treasure from this surplus

  hour the minutes fly

  Bonny Cassidy

  Plan B

  After Vivienne Plumb, ‘The alternative plan’

  Plan A: find man sympathetic to children but who loves me best of all. Plan B: become pregnant. Plan C: surf web re older mothers & childbirth. Plan D: establish relationship, difficult enough without a child. Plan E: buy lingerie, stay single & childfree. Plan F: push borrowed labradoodle pup around block in borrowed $1,200 pram. Plan G: stay single & have baby that doesn’t bite. Plan H: search web for sperm donor without tatts. Plan I: have one-night stand with only gym bloke not on steroids. Plan J: prick condoms with sterile needle. Plan K: second-night stand with same gym bloke (despite ’roids). Plan L: separate finding partner from acquiring child. Plan M: search web re twins by artificial insemination. Plan N: time travel to fifteenth-century Florentine orphanage with Kathmandu carry pack. Plan O: move to Italy, this plan requires proficiency in Italian & a grant. Plan P: think of another plan. Plan Q: search web re overseas adoption agencies with sympathetic international agreements (finance dependent). Plan R: arrange wealthy patron, superior sperm & gravy baster without telling therapist. Plan S: observe o/s adoptees’ picnic in skanky suburb. Plan T: terminate contact with sperm donor & surrogate agencies. Plan U: visit a single mum’s chat room disguised as Leila the foetus. Plan V: join kidnapping chat room. Plan W: become novice in Our Lady Queen of Procreation Convent. Plan X: pray for visitation from male angel with no active addictions & grand sperm count. Plan Y: Search web re Renaissance names. Plan Z: Change nothing.

  Julie Chevalier

  Magnolia

  A son’s birth means tragedy now.

  ‘Song of the War-Carts’, Du Fu

  I rise from my pallet: it is still dark

  and the men are asleep, their naked chests

  inflating and collapsing like a smith’s bellows.

  The moon hangs beneath the clouds: soon

  autumn will arrive, winds rippling the fields.

  Back in my village, the farmers are preparing

  for the harvest. I press together strips of linen,

  line it with moss I’d picked from the base of trees.

  It is my time, and my secret. Tomorrow we advance

  towards the border. The war-carts are loaded,

  the horses will be tethered to their burdens.

  Here the quivers of arrows wait to be spent.

  I carry a skin of water and squat in the grasses.

  Now it is safe to loosen my robes. Carefully, I clean myself.

  Even in the dark, my hands are sticky with blood.

  ***

  My first kill was a chicken. It was the new year.

  Father handed me his knife and gestured at our hen.

  She strutted around the yard, cocking her head this way

  then that, scratching and searching for worms.

  In the bamboo coop her brood of chicks cried warning.

  I pushed up my sleeves and advanced. No fear –

  we’d done this before, her and I. This was betrayal.

  I carried her to the back of the hut, her heartbeat

  pulsing in my palm. Her feathers so alive against my skin.

  ***

  My faithful horse bears me for many miles, carries me

  into battle, comforts me with his touch. Between my legs,

  the saddle creaks my name: Mu Lan, Mu Lan.

  Not for me the embroidered magnolias of marriage;

  I give birth to no
thing but blades, arrows and death.

  My sword is my husband, my brothers my men.

  They think me one of them. I drink sweet wine

  fermented from plums; I curse and spit and plot.

  I kill without mercy. Beneath my armour, secreted

  in a pouch: a carved jade favour from the King.

  In the night I draw my fingers across the dragon

  twisting around the sun. The morning dawns emerald.

  ***

  A soldier unfurls a banner and I plant it deep

  in the soil. Another day, another frontier.

  Men are busy at the fires: they grind millet

  and cook it into gruel. So many mouths to feed,

  so many sons, fathers, brothers… How much longer

  before I gaze upon the lined face of my own father?

  Beyond us, the mountains rise in mockery.

  Wei is surrounded, corralled on all sides:

  Qin, Zhao, Yan, Qi, Chu, Han…

  If I were a hawk I would take off, wing towards

  the west and the setting sun. I would hunt only

  to survive, I would feather a nest, I would fly.

  Eileen Chong

  Notes:

  The poem is based on a legendary character in Chinese history, Hua Mu Lan. This character was first recorded in The Ballad of Mulan, a work thought to have been transcribed around the 6th century A.D. in Musical Records of Old and New. While the original text has been lost, the tale has survived in an 11th century anthology, the Music Bureau Collection, which clearly attributes the source of the text.

  Hua Mu Lan was a young woman who dressed as a man in order to take her father’s place in battle. She rose to become a General during the Northern Wei dynasty (386–536 ad). It is said that she served in battle for a total of twelve years before returning to her village.

  I have taken poetic license with the use of the seven Warring States, which were in existence during the Zhou dynasty (1046–256 bc) and not during the Northern Wei dynasty.

  Secondary

  Angling over star-fields, the pitches

  lit like billiard tables.

  Those lengths you were shouted up

  and back, lungs scoured

  by Brillo air. The lazier concord

  of close mown grass and low hanging fruit

  of the short boundary. A tang

  of primitive electronics: the circuit board’s

  braille labyrinth, the slab type

  of Amstrad. This callow path you cannot take

  curves around and through

  the way a perfect river might. You find

  a little gate unlatched,

  and the light tangles, as you step

  into the ferment: into the heady reek of itch.

  The aubergine, by the window, glossy

  as an eight ball: lavender,

  the road, a torn-open

  mountain pouring cloud. Noble erosions

  from sceptre to cushions,

  from mitre to trademark. A lavish

  glut of adjectives, dissolving

  in a merlot hour – flabby as any

  soft landing among

  the rubber bells of foxgloves.

  The heart as wound or badge, a tattoo

  smudged like junk-mail wet.

  A fading haze from clubs

  like grates where fires have been –

  signs hung out as dirty washing.

  Easier to paint

  than rhyme, this volatility. A poet-envy

  of the art-fluke, or ripeness

  cut in segments sucked to the pith.

  A plaintive case deflating

  on a snack bar counter

  where citrus men

  swash fizz through lunch

  and later repair the voltage of night

  in the out-of-sync bounce

  of signal and blinker.

  You take a little kindling, the light

  of a cupped match,

  to hazard across deciduous campuses:

  the vast, blue continent of theory. Go, softly on.

  Aidan Coleman

  Hinterland

  first the mag

  nificent stone slapped

  across the valley

  /

  (acacia brushing the gusts

  leaking with shadow, the dark glows

  asking the pastures), then

  to play

  /

  my turn

  to balance on a thermal, dizzy

  with eagle

  rivulets of vineyards and scattered avocado

  groves

  glints in an eye, a single, I’m joining

 

  with the split, gulps

  at a sun, itdoeswhatitdoes, painting

  the etceteras

  — of topoi

  the vast plumes of broccoli

  the heads of the innumerable gums

 

  stooping to draw the path

  the canopy’s hazy scales

  the cusp of

  weight, fluvial wake coiled tight

  around solemn magnets, they

  mash paints, all that brush

 

  from here to the image of it

  from the light to what leads it

  the burning eye of a snake coiling

  ))

  into the west I can see its path I can sense

  what it might do as I step

  out

  and fill my intention

  with curling canyon

  )

  strings of creeks r

  attling b

  ack to the coast

  Stuart Cooke

  ABOVE US

  Above us we hear the windmill yelping, circling like a

  trapped dog while the house sits like a black skull on the

  hill. Above us the tombs are rising from their rest and

  travelling along the roads beneath trees turning sourly.

  Above us the wind flings uncountable seed into the

  dignified light tossed through the depths by a green moon

  rolling over and over in the shifting lens of the waves.

  Above us nakedness stretches forever against danger,

  ravishment and smoke. When we wake our lives are on fire.

  Above us only our sleepy souls drifting like reeds catching the air.

  MTC Cronin

  Swimming (my lane)

  The bug is in my lane, drowning fast,

  riding the ripples I make, picking at the water

  with hopeless oars, frantically gathering loss.

  My times are slipping but I still have reasons

  for getting wet every day, hauling myself

  up that long, black line, the monologue

  I have to follow. The print keeps me straight,

  a fat stemmed gift I steer to a sudden T.

  I’ve seen so many—junctions, crossroads—

  relapsing every twenty-five metres. All I do

  is cry out, kick off, go back like moving forward,

  up and down that stem, flushed by routine,

  the reach and rob of constructive habit.

  So I scoop the bug in the pool of my palms.

  I don’t think of Anne Sexton right away.

  It’s later I recall her posthumous title,

  The Awful Rowing Toward God. Over again,

  keeping the beat upon waves of my own

  making, wrestling at daybreak above

  tissues of light that shed with every stroke

  I’m attempting. Holding the course, rowing

  the surface, working these bags of breath.

  I scooped the bug just to cup my hands

  as in the days when I had faith to receive.

  Nathan Curnow

  Heisenberg Saying Goodbye to Mum at Lilyfield

  Every construction is temporary, including the fire altar.

  Roberto Calasso

  Accommodate the action in y
our life

  to wrest the deep perspective of the real

  from cubic content realms of atmosphere

  at play beyond the bank and shoal of time.

  Then resonance begins, and all vibrates.

  The syntax of position no more sculpts

  this world of interpenetrative forms

  than syntaxes of motion render grace.

  Yet syntax is the caul on all our births;

  and mothers claw the membrane from our eyes

  to fret us into life, in losing theirs.

  From there, each choice engraves a different choice.

  The decades pass. One needle for one groove.

  The canticles flare chaos from the spin.

  The gyre to crackly zero stays the same.

  (You’ve got to love the Hindus more than most.)

  We saw grand sweeps of swells from tiny arcs.

  We sliced the wave face, tumbling into light.

  My mother hugged me goodbye at seventy-three,

  knowing, just then, her strength may outlive mine.

  Accommodate the action in your life,

  she said, to aeronautical exhausts

  of every plane and cab I ever caught

  (my own arcs more elaborate than most).

  Accommodate the action of your life,

  she seemed to say: make past and future fuse.

  I felt her fingers dig into my back:

  That strength I had is yours. Things die. Not love.

  Luke Davies

  Wooden Horse

  on your crude wooden sled,

  you were once –

  a broom, a length of rope,

  a handful of off-cuts,

  two screws and eight

  three inch nails.

  You are not quite symmetrical:

  one rocker pine,

  the other, hardwood.

  And your plank torso has

  more of a bevel on the left

  than the right.

  Your hard round eye

  has been drilled right through

  your plank face;

  from above

  this gives you a bright

  dark vacancy.

  To a child this might lend

  perspicacity (squatting

  and peering I can see

  the evening ocean through

  your clear gaze);

  the same bit bore

  the hole for the dowel handle