why sometimes when I am driving do I feel like I am in a movie?

For Simmone Howell

My character is ‘driving woman’
I’m not sure of my motivation
there may be a dead man in the trunk
I glance at my child in the rear vision mirror
possibly I have repressed memories
of being a trained assassin
the houses I’m passing are painted houses
nothing has depth
nothing is its own true colour
I glance in the mirror again
the back seat is empty
at this exact moment
the car slides past
an exact duplicate of myself
waiting to cross the road
It’s like a movie
but the reality
I’m driving
I’m not sure of my motivation
the car is doing the thinking for me
it really is real life
cars stretched to the horizon
honking to each other like wild geese
we all get out
stand on our cars
and sing

In the deep dark of the night, how do I let go of my fear?

For Lefa, with love

There is so much to fear how will the work of it ever be 

thoroughly done in the half-felt, incomplete hours? 

She gets up in the night, pulls on her dressing gown,

scuffs her feet across the floor (past the picnickers in the hall)

to the kitchen to make some kind of soup. Salt, salt, pepper, salt.

She lays a cloth napkin across her knees  and sips from a spoon. 

Salt, salt, pepper salt: It tastes of childhood, 

the combination flavours of safety and harm.

It is natural to be afraid, says the shadow, who has followed her

from the bedroom (past the picnickers in the hall)

and sits across the table from her, watching the spoon break

the surface of the soup. She folds the napkin and pats

at the corners of her mouth. Salt, salt, pepper, salt.

In the morning the soup pan, the bowl, the spoon, the napkin,

have all been cleared away. She tastes dread in her throat, 

salt, salt, pepper, salt, the flavour of the waking dream.

How Can I Be In Two Places At Once?

Unless you are a bird

history entering

the panelled eye

time is colour

light is memory

migrating by heart

led by the wing

but there is only one bird

of all places

who cares nothing

for what is a bird 

place 

sticks and feathers 

made and unmade

you sleep 

standing up

on the wind

---

This poem is a temporal anomaly because it is yesterday's poem published today.

It is for my friend Kate Clifford, long time Internet companion and all round excellent human, who asked 'How can I be in two places at once?' 

The bird comes from Boyle Roche, an Irish politician in the late 1700s infamously said, "Mr. Speaker, it is impossible I could have been in two places at once, unless I were a bird." While Roche was famous for mixed metaphors and malapropisms, in this case he was quoting lines from a play.

Guess Who

 For Penny Tangey*

A girl walks into a pet shop,

and says to the guy behind the counter,

‘Just the usual thanks.’

He stares at her, slightly panicked.

He can’t tell if she’s serious.

she gazes at him for a long time.

‘Don’t worry,’ she says. ‘It’s a joke.’

He can't help feeling he has let her down in some way.

She lingers for a long time at the 'oodle cage,

and the dogs act like they know her, 

some sit,

some walk on two legs,

they whine, 

fetch,

play dead.

She says, ‘I have another joke.’

He says, ‘I don’t like jokes’ 

but not loud enough for her to hear.

She says, ‘What’s the difference between a duck?’

He waits. 

When she doesn’t say anything, 

he’s forced to say, ‘What?’

The puppies tumble over each other,

rubbing against the cage, purring like kittens.

She stands up, walks over to the counter.

The puppies whine.

‘One leg is both the same,’ she says.

He frowns, thinking about it,

he’s about to ask her to explain it,

but she is already gone.

The puppies are bereft,

they sleep all afternoon,

and at the end of the day, 

though it’s against the rules,

he takes one of them home,

a Groodle he temporarily names Ernest.

He tells his housemates about the girl,

holding the puppy on his lap,

and they have lots of questions, like

‘Was she wearing glasses?’ 

‘Did she have red hair?’

‘Did she have a big nose?’

and he says, ‘well I guess

that’s a matter of opinion.’

And then they start asking different questions, like

‘Would she take a long time to choose a video in a rental store?’

And ‘If she was a celebrity, would she release a perfume?

And would she name it after herself?’

And he says ‘listen,

she was the kind of girl who’d walk into a pet shop

and say, just the usual thanks.'

He lets Ernest sleep on his bed

and the next day, takes him back to the store.

...

*Penny wrote: Could you walk into a pet shop and say "Just the usual thanks"? Actually, this is a great question for playing Subjective Guess Who. Maybe not for poems.

The Internet of Women

Jo asked 'How can I help?' so this poem is dedicated to her, and to all the women from Ninemonths, the parenting forums I joined in 2002 when I got pregnant with Fred and especially the mums in the private group we created to share photographs called Our Baby Photos, which became our safe place on the Internet for a really long time.

The Internet of Women

Well, the years went fast, but the time between

three and four in the afternoon lasts forever

dust suspended in a shaft of light.

Every day is a miracle, and you’ve never been so bored,

you are literally never alone, and you’ve never been so lonely,

You sit down and type ‘how can anyone live like this?’

That’s how you find the internet of women.

The medium is the message, breastmilk, blood, cervical fluid,

we leak into each other’s lives.

First you make the character of yourself,

and then slowly you become that person,

until you’re ready to take her out into the world.

Once we met in a private forum called ‘Our Baby Photos’.

Now we’ve spread out across platforms,

and into ‘real life’. I’ve met women in every state of Australia,

my children have played with their children,

some of them are still friends. Of course the kids think 

they invented the internet.

The years went fast, but days go slow.

How can anyone live like this?

Every day is a miracle and you are literally never alone.

Why does this hurt so much?

For Raelene, who asked, and for Shelley, who hurts.

Hurts so much, bright agony of light

piercing the slatted blinds and I’m awake.

This is the pain I won’t give up.

Contradiction. I wanted to go somewhere,

so I buttered toast, blasted milk,

drank coffee by the window, looked down to the street,

and all that time, I was a body with corners.

Contradiction. I was soft and I was brittle,

pressing my fingerprints into the burn.

When the wound speaks out, I am grateful

for the company. I’m waiting to see

how okay I’m going to be.

Collective Sleep Dysfunction

Nights fail you and mornings are hard.

Are you on the side of sleep or no sleep?

Scared/not scared

of the dark that waits behind your eyes,

the masked parade of thoughts,

front row tickets to the carnival of dread.

You lie down in bed and it’s just not working,

or maybe you drift off okay until

you half dream yourself falling down stairs

and stagger awake,

and then you can’t sleep all over again.

"We slept in the night,

in the morning we got up

and made something of ourselves."

Here we all are on Facebook, on Twitter,

the midnight choir of the narrowly awake:

Why can't I sleep when I'm so darn exhausted?

Why do I stay up too late even though I know

I will be tired tomorrow?

Why are we still awake?
If you don't sleep all night, is it really the next day?

Why don't I want to get out of bed?

"We slept through the afternoon,

as night fell, we dreamed ourselves awake."

-----------------------------
Questions in the poem dream-harvested from the fabulous likes of:
1. Melanie Sanders
2. Sabdha Pink Charlton
3. Nicole Hayes
4. Jo Case
5. Penelope Davie