Thursday, January 30, 2014

A complete guide to missing

A complete guide to missing
Follow the corner
search the thinking chairs,
open the surroundings
vacuum pets
small children
your boundary
with hopes of a tiny piece of breath,
accept the possibility that it's
high and low, here and there, in and out,
and you've come up with avenues
If you believe your puzzle was never there
rare,
then see
you've already constructed the however.

A "cut up" poem using text from this site.

Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Rapunzel Retold

Nothing would take hold
inside my flesh. Babies turned
upside down and drowned.

I went to the witch
Looking for a magic word
to grow a daughter

The word on my tongue:
Rapunzel. Bitter weed
so close I could taste.

My belly grew, pear
ripening, a marvel, still
the pain of wanting.

I could not deny
what the body needed
to keep her living.

I wailed for her.
My husband brought in armfuls.
Rapunzel.

Drizzled with bee juice.
Cooked in oil, or taken raw
dirt clinging to the roots

Moons came and went
Sky rolling in waves. Such pain
but the good kind. Blessed.

One perfect day.
We joked my milk would run green.
She was so thirsty.

What a marvel, hey?
Did you ever see a baby
born with so much hair?

Monday, January 27, 2014

Sunday, January 19, 2014

Lasting

Last thing
Last night
Last minute
Last dance
Last drinks
Last chance
Last train

At long last

Last week
Last year

Every last drop

Last kiss
Last days
Last laugh
Last hurrah

Nothing can last forever

Last ditch attempt
Last tango in Paris
Last man standing
Last temptation

Nice guys finish last

Last resort
Last stand
Last gasp

Last I heard

Last meal
Last breath
Last legs
Last words
Last rites
Last post

Last but not least

Last line

----
It's our last night in St Andrews. I feel like I've written the sad poems about saying goodbye, so I just played with the idea of last tonight. Still I feel that something needs to be said about endings and beginnings. Most of my blogging life has happened here. I blogged when we bought the house and when we moved in. I blogged the bushfires and when Snappy died and I didn't blog when the neighbour's boy drowned but I did blog the poems Frederique wrote for me the morning after, when she could barely write, because my sadness was so palpable. My father-in-law died when we lived here and my half sister too and my mother fought breast cancer

And of course, Avery was born and the house became too small to accommodate us all.

And there were the tiny moments. Everyday life went past, ordinary and miraculous

We've loved living here and I know we'll all miss this house, but we are exciting about the move, fifteen minutes down the road in the car, on the trainline, still surrounded by trees and hills. 

Saturday, January 18, 2014

Sister nothing

Sister nothing,
the book is Alice
considering her own
daisy-chain trouble

the waistcoat-pocket world found suddenly,
a moment falling,
the deep, slowly coming dark.

See:
maps and pictures, pegs,
orange disappointment,
jar of killing somebody,
cupboards of tumbling down stairs,
earth, Longitude, Latitude.

Words to fall through,
fancy air.
Think girl, never ask.

I see it written.
--
an erasure poem, taken from the first page of Alice in Wonderland

Friday, January 17, 2014

bug that flies into the light and stays there

Today I spent seven hours in a suburban shopping mall
with three children, forty four degrees outside
the last day of a week long heatwave we had lunch in the foodcourt
and I settled my three kids at a table with chicken and chips
and walked to another shop to buy coffee and a salad
well the three year old walked around the tables saying
‘have you seen my mother she went shopping and she disappeared’
and the ten year old followed behind and explained
that I was just over there, and grandmothers frowned and smiled
and it’s a wonder no one called the police even though really
the kids were quite safe it was just a bit crowded and I didn’t
notice the three year old slide down from his seat
because I was watching my coffee being made 
then we were sitting and eating and the three year old  ran off to 
play at the jungle gym and one girl ran off to see what movies were on 
and the other went to spend her pocket money at Smiggle
I was alone but pulled apart in three directions
then a lady asked for my table and I felt like I was giving up something important, 
but I couldn’t say no, so I bussed my own crockery,
tipping the last of my wilting salad into the bin and stood in the middle
of nowhere, checking weather apps on my phone, looking at the fires
near home and waiting for them all to come back to me
there was a bird trapped in the food court, fluttering into the walls,
also seeking shelter from the heat, the cleaner rang some kind of central office
and asked if there was a protocol for birds and I was concerned to overhear
there’s not and I thought here I am in a place between living and death,
a holding pattern, a neutral existence, and I will transcend or descend
outside the city holds the heat, distant, white, shimmering

Monday, January 13, 2014

Journey

We’re in the tissue
of the atmosphere
stretched over
the below world.

In the distance
a lone ochre cloud
drifts into a solid.

Una says, ‘it’s a dragon.'

Uninhabitable
the earth spreads
thinner and thinner
moving away from us.

We circle the runway
curious, hopeful.
We’re all wondering the same thing.

In the terminal,
they are watching the sky.

Waiting.

Sunday, January 12, 2014

Total Recall

for Frederique
I know you
less than ever. 
The turning tide of days
sweeps me aside.

You tell me
you’ve forgotten everything
because you don’t understand
how memory works.

Radio show I listened to once said
every time we access a memory
we place it in jeopardy,
risk losing it forever,

all we’re left with
is the memory of a memory.
Like opening a Russian doll
and finding inside the idea of a Russian doll.

Remember the time
Evangeline cried
because she wanted

to play back her dreams?