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Poems from Reactions 1
One Over
Stiff faces spill from cars into silence,
herd up the
churchyard, shy away like sheep.
The same crowd looks immaculate,
but tense,
that danced right through the night and fell
asleep
under the marquee at Jacko's wedding
last May. We blew
across the lawn - bright
crumpled litter - and drove home
laughing.
Now we are all too awake but chalk white,
standing
beside the hole we want to shun.
Suddenly you're there in my dry
mind's eye,
raising your sparkling glass - a wry
oration,
wishing the newly-weds good luck, goodbye.
The mute
grave catches my breath, mouth open
wide to welcome the tongue of
your spoken
life.
by Helen Oswald
Hugh's Boomerang
A haze of eucalyptus oil
in sun-fermented vapour
dazes
khaki trees to blue
and lubricates the air; a hunting
boomerang slips through it,
winging
skew as a drunken fruitbat,
its barely slowing whuh whuh whuh
two coarse-thewed copter
blades come loose.
A hunter's lethal spiral
is spun here to a tourist's toy
skimming the foreign green of
trees
that know a leaner sun.
(O land of subtle colours, land
of large air, you cannot
catch:
I was not cleanly thrown.)
by Kona Macphee
PVC Trousers
make you creak when you walk.
Try to hide that from your
father.
Try to hide that from the taxi driver
who looks like
your father.
Hide it with a coat, laughter.
Let loose at the club
pretending you're naked,
shameless.
Pretending they're not the first
thing on your
mind.
That you're walking not strutting.
Have your arse squeezed,
legs smoothed.
Spill a
pint.
You're waterproof.
You seem too perfect.
Make sure you speak
of the seat, the
tautness,
your father.
Wear them again next week.
by John McCullough
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Poems from Reactions 2
The Cows in my Garden Swim in
Moonlight
in paths mapped out by the stars.
They move in single
file,
slow silhouettes in the moonlit dark.
Their breath warms
the air in clouds
and low music fills the air,
tugging at the
edges of my dreams.
I breathe in the scent of their skin
and
see the stars reflected in their eyes.
We are navigated to pastures
that sing with the sounds of the
night.
I stand still as the cows pass me by.
They are silent
now, and seem to move as one,
padding softly in the long
grass,
dissolving in the space between night and day.
And all
day the stars are blinded by the sun.
by Helen Ivory
There are Many Ways
to Leave a Millionaire and This is One
Be French and 36 and not pregnant again.
Peel off the
thigh-high boots that cost him an arm and a leg,
Wrestle your
mock-croc coat into the ornamental pond,
Watch it sink
under thick algae skin.
The snow is light as a falling eyelash.
The hothouse is a long
summer bottled in glass
Three miles - longer
than you ever thought you'd have to walk again.
Your husband is on a seed-collecting mission in
Uganda.
Imagine a thousand deaths in shades of jungly green
-
Stung, stunned, man-trapped, cooked as sacrificial meat,
His
chest is a bloody trampoline for the gorillas,
All that's left
is a heap of bones licked clean.
It won't work, but run a stiletto heel against your
wrist,
Knock, knock your boot against the glass
To catch the
attention of the rare coal orchid,
Fumbled and abused into life and born to be
named after you.
Inside there's a chair of mossy wicker and a radio left on.
You
hear polite applause brush the yellow teeth of a piano.
You are
colder than winter. Take your shoe to each pane of glass.
Watch the rains come to
shatter the Amazon.
by Miranda Yates
Hot
Dog
The smell of hot dogs reminds him
of how he used to like them,
how long it's been
since he had one and with plenty of
time,
five minutes to kill and five minutes
to get to the
interview five minutes early,
he joins the queue. Orders a
jumbo,
agrees to onions, foolishly adds brown sauce
which
slips off the sausage and gathers
into a slick which starts to
drip out of the roll,
dribbles over his cuff, cries on his tie,
runs
down his shirt. The streaks on his chin
he smears with a
tissue, spreads to his cheek,
even manages to rub some on his
forehead,
and with time escaping, as the last slither of
onion
skids down his jacket, he has to run.
It's further than
he thought but, arriving late,
still has to wait, the secretary
telling him to sit
and stay, offering him a chair in the exact
spot
where the sun cuts across the room. Left alone,
panting,
pulling at his collar, gently frying in the heat,
he realises he
smells of onions, find his fingers
tainted with grease, just as
the boss appears
and wants to shake him by the hand.
by Dean
Parkin
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Poems from Reactions 3
Mariachi
is not all je t'aime and sunshine.
The old women, always old
women, refusing
black lace shawls, calling it something else.
is probably from Marriage, the French again,
another funny
verb, another wedding.
There is more to Mexico than meets the
eye. It
is one of your favourites. Guitars,
violins, to have, to be,
je t'aime. Old women
in blue dresses, keeping time to Je
t'aime
is on the tape stuck in the stereo
of the truck as you drive
through Mexico
to somebody else's wedding. Sunshine
is burning your ears and the skin around your funny bone;
arm
out the window making shadows like birds
in the desert.
is not just a street band, the sons of old women in black lace
shawls
at a small country wedding in Mexico. Call it
something
else, your tape melting in the sunshine, call it music,
love.
by Andrea Holland
look at you
london, with your
shaved boys, your candy buses, your
black
corpuscles
your sleepless drag their blankets
lift them high off the wet
pavement,
their clean dogs keep a solemn pace behind
in a west end alley restaurant the matre d'
greets all like a
temple guardian, his palms
joined
a cluster of men in black and white tiger print
suits hatch
from a black rolls royce
look at you, london, your body alive
with seduced australians,
gardens and streetlight and
beautiful secret people in coats
underground, blue veins, red arteries of cable
frantically
unravel alongside the speeding tube,
lives undone
look at you, you tight up price, you
scaly fin, you broke,
hemmed up lush, all
malachite and cheap glitter
even the pigeons hurry to ground, race on foot, join
the rush
into your bonfire
even they will make airborne confetti of themselves
just so
they can be lit by you
by Morgan Yasbincek
The Red Zone
I need to get back into the Red Zone
because I left something
in the apartment
ten, twenty, thirty years ago.
And this
little row of pants lining the alleyway,
handwashed, sparkling .
. .
I need to climb these slate stairs.
Has anyone bothered
with the locks?
And I thought the city so quiet
until
helicopters drifted over my shoulder.
I need to get into that
apartment
with its high ceilings, its whorey curtains,
the bat
still flapping in the wardrobe,
a baby on the table.
Did
someone leave a baby on the table?
by Julian
Stannard
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Poems from Reactions 4
Turning Into Men Again
This morning men are returning to the world,
waiting on the sides of blackened pavements
for a rickshaw to carry them away
on the sharp pins and soles of their dancing feet.
They must go to the houses of their childhoods
to be soothed. They must wait for the wheels
to appear from the thin arm of road.
They must catch the crack in the sky
where the light shifts from light to dark
to light again, like the body in the first stages of love;
angering, heightening, spreading.
Bent knees, bent breath.
Now they are moving, changing colours.
Women are standing at the thresholds of doors,
holding jars of oil, buckets of hot water and salt,
calamine, crushed mint, and drink.
Some crawl into their mother s laps,
collapse against the heavy bosoms of old nannies,
search for the girl who climbed with them
to the tin roof for the first time.
Inside, in the shadows of pillars,
fathers and grandfathers are stepping down
from picture frames with secrets on their lips
calling the lost in from their voyages.
by Tishani Doshi
Into the Rain
If I lean toward the day, toward your scent,
the sheep graze mildly on the slope.
We grow warm with the uphill walk,
the scent of jasmine ripening in the still air.
The sheep graze mildly on the slope,
glancing from time to time at the low fields buttercups.
The scent of jasmine ripening in the still air
the cast of your glance is that close.
Glancing from time to time at the low fields buttercups,
we talk of what we see yet skirt desire.
The cast of your glance is that close.
Rains on the new breeze, rains underfoot.
We talk of what we see yet skirt desire;
we grow warm with the uphill walk.
Rains on the new breeze, rains underfoot
if I lean toward the day, toward your scent.
by Carrie Etter
At Evvo's, on Newport Road
Beyond ordinary consciousness, says Evvo,
there is a whiteness that may be mystical,
or it may be brain damage. He isnt sure.
He glimpses it now and then, for milliseconds.
What we often thought was mystical was merely
chemical, he says, so this may be burnt wiring
but it could be the two-way mirror glimpsed
from the perfect angle, and the surprise is such
that each time we see it the angle is lost. Evvo draws
the bubbling water through the cotton wool
into the body of the syringe. They wear togas there,
he says, and he says thats what makes him suspect
that this white city he has seen . . . oh . . . about seven times . . .
may or may not be real. He wants me to jack up.
It will be fine, he says. First thing youll do, he says,
is throw up, feel like shit for a while,
and then . . . and then . . . he hunts for the poetry . . .
you will see the sun break through to illuminate
a small field . . . the one field that had the treasure
in it. I call to him through the bathroom door
as Im leaving . . . as he is vomiting
his last meal into the toilet bowl . . .
that it was strange to see him again,
so unexpectedly, after all these years.
by Alan Mumford
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