Bird Embraced

vale Mirka Mora 

She, who was always a bird,

lived here as a member of our family. We held her,

human-sized,

gently around her neck, wanting her to sit with us

as we watched TV, read the Sunday papers, made pictures,

sewed, mixed a cake, dressed and undressed in the brown light. 

These were the main activities of our home.

On the kitchen windowsill there were lemons,

papery garlic, a cup full of paintbrushes. 

Mother looked out, over the sink, to the tops of trees.

The inside light was the colour of the river

seen from underneath.

Sometimes we squabbled, not wanting to take turns,

pulling her between us, begging her to sleep on our beds, 

eat from our bowls, swim in our baths, shadow our footsteps.

We fought over which one of us she loved the best.

She loved us all silently, the quick heat of her heart 

in her fluttering breast.

We never opened the windows. 

We never left a door ajar.

Nevertheless, the parting.

One morning: an early wind rushed in, 

we woke and knew she was gone.

She was in the tree outside, her eye was closed to dream.

All of them, my sisters and brothers,

were in the trees around the house, 

I ran from window to window, 

pressing myself against the glass.

We had lived together for a long time,

and so I thought of her all that day.

The birds called to each other

to love forever and ever.

I told myself I would learn 

to do everything by feel, walking

the inside walls of the house 

with my eyes closed, clicking my tongue like a bat,

trying to sense the edge of shadows,

the rippling of light,

in the dimness of the underneath.

Phases

(For Emmett, neé Una)

He tells me:

if it’s a phase

it’s one that will shape him

all his days.

What makes a girl?

How do you find 

the end

and the beginning:

The shoulder, the heel,

the crown of the head?

Thirteen years ago

I watched the mirror, 

as frontwards facing,

arms folded like bat wings,

he descended.
Born inside the caul.

it’s a girl, they told me

as if anyone could be certain

about such a thing

unpeeling 

the membrane, 

revealing the face

tipping him into my arms

my body rushing towards him

instinct and adrenaline

love swept me to the floor

in a tide of blood

they stitched me up

but wounds open and close

it’s a boy, he tells me

I ask him:

what makes a boy,

how do you find the end

and the beginning

the shoulder, the heel,

the crown of the head, 

hair cut away 

to reveal a face

Living Dead

Why am I still watching Zombie movies?

1

We’re always surrounded by difficult ideas

vivid and pulsing, the insides of things,

barely concealed by the outsides of things.

It’s nice to know there’s some kind of order:

Follow the rules. Lock the front door.

Keep things tidy. Keep yourself nice.

Have a plan, stay close to home.

That’s what separates us from the monsters.

It’s not what your hair looks like,

it’s the effort you put in each morning,

it’s the time you spent on your hands and knees

scrubbing the blood out of the carpet.

2

It’s not about surviving, it’s about love.

I mean sure, sometimes it seems better

on the other side, the elegance of pure appetite,

the momentum of a single relentless idea.

Sometimes you gaze out the car window,

the engine running, outside the seven-eleven,

and wonder what it’s all for, the instinct for living,

startled by your own pinkness, the flush of mortality,

the sweetness on the palate of the tongue,

the prickling of the skin – heat, cold.

You wonder what it’s like to be dead.

You wonder what it’s like to be alive.

Kristin asked the question.

Helicopter

In the middle of night’s

expanding hours,

light sweeps around the room.

I am woken by the sky machine,

dreaming my dream, searching

the river’s dark unconscious

for the shadows of hidden men.

Fairy tale

A wound, drawn by hand,

spilling the memory the body forgot,

insides and outsides, all of a one.

She considers her own image,

the book is a mirror.

The crooked scar hums with possibility.

The poem tastes salty, sweet.

Manifest destiny.

Fluctuations in heart rate and breathing,

visceral sensation and so on.

There is a crossing over, a voyage,

and a world beneath the world,

not a retreat but a way of negotiating pain,

negotiating with the Agent of Pain,

who tells her she’s done nothing

to earn her own suffering

and puts her to work

witnessing the suffering of others,

day in, day out, until her jaw aches

from the horror she doesn’t have the language

to expel.

New Year, Alphington

The river runs out of time,

which is the source. 

A memory 

held in the body

not the mind,

the slow ease of pain

always below the surface.

The river is fast

and slow, new

and old.

Light, light,

the dappling of time.

The body is multiple

with surfaces, leaning in

to listen.

Where there is time

there is always music.

13 Ways of Looking at a Possum

ADVICEPOEM
for Andrew MacDonald

There’s a possum in my roof.
More importantly:
I’m scared of it. Helpoem?

(with apologies to Wallace Stevens)

I
Among twenty suburban houses
The only thing truly awake
Is the possum.  

II
I am in three minds
And all of them
Are afraid of the possum.

III
The possum whirled on the telegraph wire
It was a small part, but he made it his own.
His agent said it would lead to bigger things.

IV
A man and a woman  
Are one thing.  
A man and a woman and a possum
Are quite another.
But a man and a man
Or a woman and a woman
Who want to get married
Should be equal in the eyes of the law.

V
I do not know which to prefer,  
Inflections or innuendos.
The possum’s guttural growl,  
Or just after.  
Well obviously, it’s better
After the possum shuts up.
Except then you lie awake, tense,
Waiting for it to start again.
Bloody possum.

VI
The shadow of the possum
Is the shadow of casual hatred.
The possum despises you,
And everything you stand for.
Your human privilege.
The inheritance of shame
Is a burden and a gift. Atone.

VII
O thin man of Elwood,  
Why do you imagine the possum?
The possum is the void.
It lives in your thoughts
and in her thoughts,
but it does not dwell in its own thoughts.

VIII
The possum involves itself  
In what you know
Even in the middle of the afternoon
In the midst of rational human activity,
The possum intrudes –
Its animal intuition,
Stuttering, scratching.
Scraping at the threshold
Of consciousness.

IX
When the possum
Marked the edge  
Of one of many circles,
I was like WTF?
That’s really weird.
I’m not sure why the possum would do that.  

X
At the sight of possums
Flying in a green light,
It became clear
They were probably up to something.
 
XI
He drives up the Nepean Highway.
He sees something on the road
And swerves.
But it’s not a possum.
Just the shadow of a possum.
He’s thinking of getting a Prius.

XII
The river is moving
To the outer suburbs.
It’s heard about this place
Near the end of the Hurstbridge Line
That’s like Northcote in the country.
The possums are kind of being arseholes about it.
The river tries to ignore them
But deep down it thinks
Maybe it can’t hack it in the suburbs after all.


XIII
It was evening all afternoon.  
Who knows what the weather was doing
Or going to do.
The possum ran out of its hole
And said, there are many truths.
You dream a little
And feel the rising of the dark.