Joan Kerr

Someone has stood here like this, opening the shutters
to look over the vineyard in the mornings
of months of terror, seasons of hopelessness
when the worst is commonplace,
someone has stood here, as she does now
hardly believing in the quiet in the garden.

Five hundred years old, the house has absorbed
nothing. Some went from here to the guillotine,
others to the Polish camps.  Some simply lived here
happy and not, like most of us.
These ancient houses teach us only
nothing is recoverable.

No one but this woman will remember these five nights
staring at sleep across the night-lit kitchen.
No one but this writer will remember
by the wall into the vineyard, looking up from a book
to see the woman, opening the shutters
of a stone house against an untouched sky.
 
 
 

 A Portrait of Mrs Latham, 1880

One gloved finger resting on a tiny book,
she has a Roman matron’s eye and chin.
The wife of an important man.  The dress
is stiff grey satin, fishtailed out behind,
tight to the neck and wrists, and all around
the portrait someone has embroidered
a thin forest of arrow-stitch, blue on grey.

An English garden, yes – cool steps,
a stately balustrade – and yet
the acid light of summer
vibrates in the trees, tinges her face.
The artist must have wrestled with
this light that will not
seep and soften where it falls.
Too late, he saw it draws the viewer’s eye
away from her and out
into the jostling trees.  So many trees,
they say you could get lost
between here and the lighthouse.

He works, reworks
the dress, the steps,
the diamond-angled tiles.
Above his stooping head the light rides
over the settlement
eagle-eyed, on wide untiring wings.
 

The fort

It was cold the day we went to the fort
and we huddled in the arm of the wall
where the cannon made a windbreak

the cannon surveys the sea
like a dinosaur up on its leathery paws
sniffing the wind for prey or competition

the wind was empty of either
it blew us only the smell of whitewash
cold in the ammunition tunnels

the tunnels rang with an absence of ghosts
where ghosts should have been
this was the hot heart of the fort

now like a student’s model of the heart
it shows us its workings, scoured, precise
no shred of skin, no tethering

to any part of any thing that makes us live

Winter ferry

Black and tan, a tamed dog, the land cowers along the icy sea
the ferry holds up, then slides sideways under the grey stare
the straight horizon in your head
tilts
in the separate rooms of the brain
the furniture slides and things fall
silently

This uncomposing, unbalancing, is the ride the ferry takes you on
as if, leaving the land, you were never coming back
to anywhere
untied, unguarded, you are travelling the line
where sea and sky make one
parabola

Make one parabola, the sky and sea, and swing you out
along their arc to where the land, fist over fist
begins to rise
you are hauled in, made fast
to Sunday afternoon, rain of asphalt, tiers of houses
each ranked window holding one
small square of sea
 
 
 
 
 
 

Doctor

When the phone rings in the night to tell him someone’s died
not unexpectedly, and without giving trouble,
he thinks as he lies down of the hurt red setter
he had to shoot, what, forty years ago? His heart flinches again.

His house flowering quietly around him
in this contented suburb, he lies awake until
the trees step out of the shadows.  Fifty.
He wonders what he did for the rest of that day
and why he’s never seen, these forty years,
those trees with the ripped and shaggy bark
and under it, the silky heifer skin.  That sky
so clean and glittering
it makes you want to weep.
 
 

Ballarat Cemetery
(Sidney Nolan 1943)

Hoist in rows on pedestals, the angels
signal across a sandy road, a flat streak
like a dog let off the lead.
They have never got used to this ironic country.
The grass with its weight of tombstones
buckles, and something moves like a poltergeist
under it, elbowing up the angles of the graves.
Beyond the Northern pines a jostle of houses
and an old mining chimney
under the carmine sky.  Here the dead lie anxiously,
English, Irish, German, Dutch,
and the painter, coming in
with skin still warm from the Wimmera,
shivers.  His hand moves differently here
as if his whole arm stiffened.  Not just
the Ballarat winter, but the clear intent
to cast them loose, these European dead.
White on the hill behind, their houses slide together
like dice in a hand preparing to throw.

I have had poems published in a wide range of Australian journals and
have
recently had my first publications in the U.K and the U.S. I have won a
number of awards, including theFellowship Of Australian Writers' John
Shaw
Neilson Poetry Prize in 1999 (joint winner).

Christopher Kelen

Republic

The past won't know us now.
We're changing the locks
on motley desire. We are
among strangers. The villages
are wished away and the kingdom
of six o'clock closing.

Shall I invoke you as an ultimatum?
Threat or promise? Secret republic
declared long ago. Oracular republic
of shillings and pence. Of bush week,
of whims assembled to towns, strung on tracks
till the tar melts in summer. Republic of the burning
bush. And the sand blows over us, crusts all our dreams.
Shark infested floater, sand ringed, bright in a fly blown
shielding the eyes sort of way. Republic of oldest curses,
latest luck. Of shopkeepers smug in wise saws,
free with advice but tight with their credit.
Postmasters weighing and measuring doom.
Profitless waste of quids to be made.
Survivor's republic. Lost causes. Found comforts.
Of great good fortune talked itself down to dust.
Of greater regrets. Republic of ought to be, smog,
grim defiance, of the empty gesture, the endless beach,
of the sun never setting, the clock runneth over,
jumping the queue and the waves break forever.
Republic of terrible skies higher than others.
Of the world's bluest ocean, of dragging
through court, all colours cancelled
by the office of jealousy, its new tax
on everyone's everyday spark.

Republic of the fair go, empty republic thought up
by pisspots and murdering bastards. Of loud writing,
of scribbled bark smaller than hands. Of the roaring deaf
taunted to fists in the pub of the serious business.
Terra nullius and the borrowed jukebox.
Republic of the old truths hidden.
Of never bothering to say you're sorry.

Republic of uncontrollable nights, thighs danced till dawn
without fear or favour or memory either. Of the world's weary
paws come to rest here at last. Of the happy-go-lucky sat up like
Jackie. Jungle republic of crocodiles waiting, sharks in the shallows.=

Stripped assets and staff sent home. Republic of gullet,
of gulping it down. Of half-pissed regrets for same follies
repeated. Republic of not knowing how it got home
or forgetting to go or wherever it came from.

Republic of strangers trying to please.
Of refugees sprayed on arrival, of burning the boats
and they still wash ashore. Banana republic, uranium glow.
Anorexic, bulimic, mumbling excuses. Beery republic
with its balls on the barbie. Of the borrowed aphorism, of we
told you so. Of having your own way. Us and them in the convict
republic. Of the past, of the few. Of doing to others what they've
done to you. Republic of redistribution. Of the lost agenda.
Of stumbling in mood swings. Monster republic and six heads
can't agree the wedge's thin edge and the floodgates of peril.
Of two Wongs and a horde of whites.

Of the class and of the gender. Of the great forms fallen into
disuse. Of magazine royals, involuntary intrigue. Of service
disgruntled, of dreamy afflictions, of not yet, of not yet.
Till it's knighted itself for services rendered. Republic
of garments sewn up in abjection. Shoes heeled
there too, of nothing is mended.

Republic of Tories who take the horizon having
their effortless way with all labour. Big baby republic
of lottery winners. Sniffs its own flesh in the fire it's still
building. Surly republic grudging the chore of choosing its stupor.
You beaut republic of having your cake, eating it too.
Boys' own packrape republic. Of the weak
applause, of the wild jeering, the frenzied bid.

Of diggers, of dim regrets, lunch in the trenches, head in the sand,
hang dog mouth. Chips on both shoulders, lording the penguins.
In love with its clich=E9s of distance, of dullness. Shiny republic
of suits and ties trading the future forever for dinner today.
Of the union gone blue in its shivery underwear.
Disintegrated communists who won the big battle.
Of flash ideas condemned to slow death,
sold overseas for want of cash, for another cask
of our own Chardonnay.

Inimitable republic of lost lines, hand-me-downs,
five fingered discounts from the horn of plenty.
Lakes of too little and lakes of too much.
Of lusts and grim appetites. Mongrels from anywhere.
Their last legs, the shortfall. Of the hand over fist and the fist
moist for fun. Inevitable republic of the little lie down, of the nee=
dless
worry, of the needle exchange. All vices at once, pissing itself
with good honest fear. Ad-blackened lungs - asthmatic republic
forgetting to breathe. Till its allies remind it. What do
we care? Toil and ease all at once. Too many roos
in the top republic. Having a word with itself.

Having it off. Thumping away at the coital cot.
Sweaty summer republic of love's one mosquito
seeking us out. Republic of the few intent at their tasks,
the many fixated with watches, tempering passion, regret.
Sad swellings, tumescence. Alighting at Redfern.
Maddening republic of the limits of the physical.
Of the two year old's tantrum of 'no' to suggestions,
of 'no' to its dinner of medicine meat. Republic
of me and of me and of me. Blind eye to the neighbours
all in atrocity. Blind eye to big bullies footing the bill.

Matey republic - all best intentions.
Men off moving cattle for their solemn reasons.
Sworn secrets. Of their knowledge is a little thing
in the vastness of what will be. Flat, grey republic neither for nor
against. Republic of light falling for us, heaven's gifts, of the sun
running towards us or running away. Of the shifting line through
the tree. And the tree goes on living, half its limbs either side.
Republic of fenceposts, where no one owns the boundary
or the line of thought that runs between
greed's kingdoms which are our
common wealth.

___________________________________________

The Sociology of Paradise

First I came through a hoop of flesh.
I didn't jump I swam.
There was an endless mud plain
and another storm coming.
Rain beat the rice shoots
green out of the soil.
Millions were huddled
round the still ether.

The century dragged on.
I missed the boat, swam out
to the island. And the air
was still in the sun's quarter
and the half a sky
where waves could have been.
The moon washed up
where the tide rusted into the sand.

Cars came out of the twentieth century.
Coca Cola came ashore, washed
on the hard live shell of paradise.
A coconut fell out of nowhere
onto my child's head. I didn't stumble.
There were stars and bars everywhere.
I could hear the west crackling through
looming shadows of bliss.

Back-country hills were dense with trees,
=

dissidence, notches for climbing up.
And curled into a noose of straw
the disappeared hung, swaying
- invisible burden of paradise. I jumped
through a hoop of gold. I had
the ring of confidence then
and a flag the colour of mud.

Helicopters filled up the sky.
At lunchtime and late in the afternoon
when the noise came
birds shifted forward in a straight line
black, palm to palm, fifty metres.
Then when they came back
there was nothing the wind could move.
Trees clung to a rock in the sea.

On dry land I had a good steady job
in the flyspray factory. They paid me
in cigarettes so naturally I took up
smoking. The mist from the nozzle
formed up a halo
to martyr the very air.
You couldn't call it a leak.
It was more like missile testing.

Each day here proud of the fallen -
brainless slaughters to glory in.
The earth makes up a place for each.
The new rice sings from the earth.
The colour of the mud in our veins
is a flag billowing over a hoop
of bright gunmetal: the welcome mat.
I didn't jump I swam.

___________________________________________

Dad

man with chainsaw sought
for primal scene

a beer drowning, gut sweat
great strides show

he is a voice at first
far as time's extremity
aside of where I'll be
- a cure

his winter's wood
to frame those blows
to catch at chimney walls come light

and nails blacked deftly scratch
the hairs in which air noses
the presence of no one over this paddock

that is a knowledge rendered me
one step inside you'll always stand
knowing this arcane resolve

skies open on
it does no good

o gather close you mute attenders
hear my paradoxes, pleas

and soon the dark folds
fortune brings
fat the road behind
to whistling
itself

o father forgive
the shed throws this spirit

it's then the kookas sing

old keys and the form dry
type is worked home

___________________________________________

Land of the Lottery Winners

In the street of the newcomers bitumen
is dark with oars. You can hear the beating,
unbearable brightness. Solace of kitchens -
a dripping somewhere revenging contraption.
Mastering bedroom - a frenzy, for fears.

There's no work in this play of acres, nothing but the flesh
won't have. This is the finished world. These are the winners.

Edges are trimmed and the bindy-eyes harvest, mouth of a ghost
lies under that tap new washers won't fix. It's all new though.
Kerbs are in order, gutters all flow down there where the urchins
and each of us makes fair a beginning, begetting if the prime
should come before the knowledge. Hearth dark
of forbidding is pressure, all thumbs.

In the suburb of lottery winners (hinterland golden
and green with its luck) losers have mortgaged their skins
to serve. They've left off ancestral much loathed resentment,
old days of curfew and eat more of this.
No one's from here. Nothing is made. All kept to a rhythm.
We lend. We're repaid. Howmanyfold? Howfarahead?
Consult us for an oracle.

Our lackeys are ox-strong, hunt in wire paddocks.
Everyone does what you or I would. You start out
dirt scraping, you don't change your name.

In the home of the lottery winners like this:
each has a magic pudding or pizza, a cake and eat it too I mean.
The bone breaks your way every time. A kind of bottomless
dole with no questions. Still there are whingers. It's still not
enough.

As luck would have by the short and the curly
everyone knows what you want. Anonymity's as good
as your gold. They won't object, it's what they're here for,
unless you wish them to of course. The brief is not to disappoint.

Nothing does. No doubts shape the body.
There's labs where life keeps at the odds. Miraculous skins
stretched agony thin but all their own. Still there are those
cashed up hereafter. You should see the big send-offs
on Pyramid Street. All statues and thanks for the memories,
cramming last calories in if they can.

As the young in their prodigious strength and talent for abuse,
lift without labour, draw strength out of torments, so of a certain
shape and years a man comes to his lottery.
In this there are no causes, flags. A volume of air
we purchase our children, theirs. They will repay.
What can we bring them? The holograph tree?
We can watch the sky buries. Over the entering gate
the sign says:We the world's best.We fortunate few.

Self made Immortals! Ours the last country!
Hard by the rainbow - yes! There is heaven
for lottery winners.

Believers we'll bus you. Drought or some vengeance?
I have the pictures. There's only one language - winners'.
Statistics. Ours in the newsagent when we say
this one any good? or another, the same.
I too have a ticket - luck swells my pocket
I check the paper, know a day soon
my name among all the proscribed.
No saying when the lottery claims you.
Life is charmed just to be by the tale.

Here's postie's whistle
and dog after bike.
It's bob-a-job day
in the land of the sinners.
Egg in lard and bacon slabs,
bread as white, as bright
as hope, our highway
- all God given tomorrow
and here at the table
His beard is all eggy.
But you can't tell God, can you?
Besides He's got something there
for later.

There's something rubs off.
There - that's a good privilege.
There's retribution
- that's gets them in.
Best thing
in the land of the winners,
God's whiskers caught in the light.
It warms the crutch to serve
and we're unending
in congratulations.

___________________________________________

My Flag

     is a beachtowel
heavy with sand
     whole tribes tangled in it

involuntary sky -
          heart's refuge
     in the true of dark
mind's refuge in the heart

          the flag
     must be all things to all
- a mirror aloft, reflection unfurling
that should make everyone happy

in a room with the queen
you'd see the queen
and she'd see you, her subject
- one among the many flags

in the bush would be magpies to fly in and tangle
- catch them like that when they get territorial

on the front of the big boss's car
- more of chrome
dark tarmac

in the night you'd choose the stars
- bright pinpricks from another sky
in which
the true flag must fly, be windblown, limp
from the accustomed pole -
a square cut of heaven and no strings attached

___________________________________________

virtual republic

One might raise the question whether a thing can be in itself -
everything being either nowhere or in something else.
               - Aristotle, the Physics

you could say it started with the walkman
and now that everything's everywhere
nobody is where they are anymore
everyone's anywhere
and all at once
spread so thin that
no one's really with you
no one's anywhere at all
stay put and you won't be missed
we're virtually gone

it's like God or Santa Claus
- with welcome houses everywhere
what good does it do them?

up in the sky you see planeloads of them:
the-dissatisfied-where-they-are going somewhere else
that's what they'll call our time when it's over
- the age of somewhere else

of course people love to complain about it
'I spend so much on my phone bill', 'I'm always commuting '
no one can get where they want fast enough
and when they get there of course they want
to be somewhere else. Everywhere's such
a disappointment. For one thing everyone there
got there before you. In fact the faster life gets
the more of a waste of time it seems

the Japanese bow on the phone
and with mobiles they bow while they walk
in Korea last year was the world's first
mobile phone fatality - a man walked
into a tree on the phone
I guess his mind was elsewhere
and then he was gone

but it's not just the phone
I was in the supermarket today
and none of the people working there
worked there. The fish company does
the fish shelves. The dogfood company
does the dogfood. None of them know
where anything is except right where
they are. I guess you could say to
the fish people. ' Where's the fish? '
and they could hand you a packet
and say 'It's right here.'
and you'd call that presence

    Christopher Kelen was born in Sydney in 1958 and though sometimes resident in the Myall Lakes area of New South Wales, Australia,currently teaches at the University of Macau in South China. He holds degrees in literature and linguistics from the University of Sydney and a doctorate on the writing process in poetry from UWS Nepean. Kelen's poetry has been published and broadcast widely. In 1988 he won a first prize in the ABC/ABA national poetry competition for his poem'Views from Pinchgut'. He has won a number of other awards in Australia and overseas, and his first volume of poetry, The Naming of the Harbour and the Trees received an Anne Elder Award in 1993. In 1997 his second volume Green Lizard Manifesto was published by Cerberus Press. His long poem Mobius was released in book form in 1998. This year his fourth book of poems,Republics, has been published by Five Islands Press at the University of Wollongong. And in June 2000, Tai Mo Shan/Big Hat Mountain, Kelen's (English and Chinese language) collaboration with visual artist Carol Archer, was exhibited at the Montblanc Gallery in Hong Kong's Fringe Club.

Mike Williams

Three poems from a series, Impressions of Enigma

Ophelia

broken head and the drifting sky
wild birds flee my skull -
   hang you moon and all your cold promise
   restless as a dog
   what prayer? what god?
is this silence so awful?
i am filled with the spread of lowlands
always between horizons
swimming the cold light
   even Jesus was as mad as bees
   trailing his love like a wound
       i am the flower curling in my fingers
       i am water
       i am streaming hair
       i am dressed for love
i know this world and its cruel light
my eyes scatter like fish
in the stream of my drowning
   river hold my winter heart
   tell me now my mind is right
 

Shackleton 1874-1922

1915:
you and your men watched the ice
take the Endurance like a winter animal
and your world was grey and white
and cold was all you knew
cold that cut through fur and wool and flesh
ached at bone and marrow
hunger was your shadow
eating dog seal penguin any bird that came your way
this was deep space and everything before was another life
remembering green or meadow
or some trout stream lazy and cool at high summer
so easy to surrender and freeze life away
huddled in sleeping bags
and let the cold still your heart
you must have scanned those drawn faces
of the men that had followed you South
saw hope fading in their eyes
lonely for warmth    women     a set table
death was no option
you had the open boats
dragged them over ice to open water
a covenant with misery and pain
Endurance - where she failed you would not... could not
800 miles in an open boat       six of you
the others had watched you pull away into grey sea and sky
sad light on that storm lashed island
like lost mariners of some other time
in their stinking furs and bearded faces
I¹ll be back you told them      come for you
they wanted to believe it    but could not
the miracle was... you did come for them
watched them stumble down to the water
blackened faces unbelieving    hearts lifting away like gulls
going north   going home
 

Jeanne d¹Arc 1412-1431

what can be said for you after the decades the centuries
that hasn¹t already been said?
nothing probably -
perhaps like all enigma
we should let it rest
   but this is not the way of things
I create you for my fiction
building again from the picked bones of history
steal this   steal that
   truth is intangible
as those voices in your head
do I defile you if I lift you from the page?

1429 you enter Orleans
armoured and bannered
your face shining in the sun
an army at your back
   all this to become fire and smoke
for what they fear they burn
Jeanne your ashes cooled
in the earth of our consciousness
   forgive us our conceptions
for we know not what we write
 
 

©2000 Mike Williams

Mike Williams lives with his partner, also a poet, her two sons
and a disturbing amount of animals; he writes poems when the mood strikes
and works in a bookshop in Perth.

George Antonakos

OLD CLARRIE

The twilight began to capture the view.

Old Clarrie sat on his porch and watched
several Landrovers disturb the dust.
Another usual day,
cattle and the garden.
Late afternoons staring out
over the paddocks to the coast,
pondering.
Not much
money in cattle anymore
enough though
with the pension and bananas.

Old Clarrie
not all there
never married
womanly comforts
bought in brothels
during Show times.
Now the loins are never warm.
No needs
other than the daily routine
and the view of the coast
from the lighthouse to Brunswick Heads.

Expansive view.
A training of the eyesight.
Always magnificent, sometimes magical.
Old Clarrie lived in a postcard,
the television told him so,
but it was always everyday,
sometimes ordinary.

Seasonal rains
left their clouds
distant dark.
Old Clarrie
leaned forward.
Saw a snake
near the shed in which were
stored feed, paints, parts
and poisons.

The twilight focused the lights in the landscape.

A lot more lights these days,
used be a time when there'd be the lighthouse,
meatworks and a couple of bright lights
at Mullum and at Brunswick.
That's all you'd see.

Cough,
pain in the left lung.
A rub with a knuckle
and a deep breath.
Better start dinner soon,
or I'll miss 'Sale of the Century'.
Another stab held his breath,
like the writing he had seen,
earlier by the road.

Half-way to the highway.
That rear tyre must be flat!
Get out the spare and the jack.
That's where he saw
spray painted on road,
'I had a joint with Jesus on the way to Uncle Tom's'.

What did it mean?
You can get used to hippies,
but not to disrespect.
Jesus looks after you.
City types!
Hippies!
The flat tyre replaced,
no longer felt like going to Brunswick.
Get back up the hill now.

The twilight was about to introduce the stars.

Stupid words.
Shouldn't be said or read.
Stupid thoughts.
Swirled inside his head.
The lung hurt ferociously.
Cough.
Spasm of the chest.
Left arm clawed and cramped.
Hidden pressure stopping breath.

The moon is getting high in the afterglow.
So many lights now,
between the lighthouse and Brunswick Heads.

Then there was one less.
 

A FROWN AND A SMILE

A man had just been hit by a bus.
Some people were trying to give CPR.
Then, another man came up and went
through the man's pockets.
He found only a near full packet of cigarettes.
He said, '...well, at least that's something...'.
The paramedics took over when the ambulance arrived.
'Anyone know who he is?'
'No?'
Two blocks away,
the man lit another of his free cigarettes.
A few metres further on,
he found a twenty dollar note.

© George Antonakos 2000
 George Antonakos was born in Sydney, Australia and has worked as a waiter, auditor, carpenter and commercial cook.  He now lives on the North Coast of New South Wales designing web sites and working on a novel manuscript.

Jane Downing

FINDING OUT

It’s melanoma    on the scalp
—the other place we don’t check is between t h e  t o
e s—
because we all want our place in the sun
and aren’t very good with irony

Scratching the surface is enough—then
it’s ignored            for too long
always so much to get done
—understanding Derrida and Foucault—
          falling in love anyway
Now they’re talking diagnosis and prognosis
and percentages that can only look good
      in retrospect
Cant is piled on jargon is piled on silence
while mortality travels on faster than the speed of
dark

This would be easier to cope with in springtime
because walking through the rain
puts te
 ar
 s on the cheeks of every passer-by
and the herd instinct is too strong
 

AT THE GUTS OF IT
The carp were beginning to take over the river
and he needed another excuse to sit on its banks
so he decided to become a poet

He would sit under a gum
from the dewy half-light of morning to the shadow
dance of dusk
and bring home a poem for dinner

He wrote you can never step into the same river twice
(he was not a very original poet)
But his wife said you get wet either way

He wrote the river is as peaceful as a woman’s womb
and as refreshing as a lover’s smile
She asked will I wring the chook’s neck for dinner?

Later while trolling for trout coloured words
he realised it’s called fishing not catching
She said nothing to the blank page at the end of the
day

Then a briefly snared fingerling tells him
life is like a fish moving in the current
Really? says his wife not if you’re the one who has to
gut it

And so the poet and the wife
learnt to eat carp
 
 

COLOUR CODING

She says
'My first grandchild's just arrived. Haven't started
knitting yet.
Didn’t know if it would be pink or blue.'

I want to ask
Is the father Apache, the mother Sydney
Red Indian and white Anglo Saxon producing blushing
pink?
Or is there a bloodline from Troublesome Creek running
here
the Methemoglobiemia of the Kentucky clans tinting the
babies bluo-blue?

But there's no trace of America about this grandmother
Perhaps it's a matter of womb temperature
Hot/pink   Icey/blue

'It's a girl'
she is saying into my unspoken enquiry
'Jaundiced, poor love'

Ah
Not pink or blue
Yellow
 
 
 

=====
Jane Downing
PO Box 3080
Mail Delivery Centre
Albury   NSW    2640
Australia
Ph: (02) 60217032
email: jane_downing@yahoo.com.au

Jane Downing writes both poetry and prose and has
had over ninety pieces of work published in literary
journals in Australia, Europe and the US.

Philip Hammial

CORRESPONDENCE

Home to find a party in full swing.  Complete
strangers.  Ordinary looking people, but something’s
missing - no drinks, no food.  Their nourishment
comes from elsewhere.  “It’s nothing
to be concerned about,” she says as she leads me
into another room, my bedroom, where she shows me
the capsule that she keeps under her tongue.  Could
it be cyanide?  Bite at your peril.  I’ve lost
my appetite.  Which is just as well because the party’s
over, the last guest leaving with my children
in tow.  I’d like to go too but don’t have a ticket,
turned away by the conductor, the locomotive hissing
in the moonlight as its huge wheels slowly, reluctantly
begin to turn, my garden
ground to a pulp.  Their nourishment
comes from elsewhere.  From
Constantinople possibly.  “Your children
will like it there.”  Waving
from a window (Victorian children
in an ornate frame) they promise to write.
 
 
 
 
 

AN INCIDENT IN FAMAGUSTA

First, on a real table
a real pie, sliced (no way of knowing
how it got there).  And then, as though
the two events were connected,
we found her in a bath bleeding
from both wrists.  Too late, obviously,
to save her.  Why?  Because outside, in the canal,
a barge with her name - Margaret - on its stern
was passing under a bridge.  It was being poled
by a man who was probably naked, naked
because it seemed that he should be (the mist
too thick to see if, in reality, he was).  But what
we did know with completely certainty was that
the water in the canal had stopped flowing.  It
was simply waiting.  For as the Moor
was overheard to say: Pure Christo polls high
in the Famagusta District, which was obviously
where we were for where else would water, in sympathy
with a suicide, stop flowing?  And wouldn’t start again
until life resumed its normal course, i.e. until those
who discovered the body (the we in this narrative)
called the authorities, etc. &, incidentally, opened
the window that faced the canal & shooed out
the hundred or so birds that had been crashing
against the walls & windows of the little chamber of horrors
where she chose to end her days.  Birds that, by rights,
should have been in a pie.
 
 
 
 
 

FLOATING

How can the air support it –
this corpse floating along
six feet above the ground?
And then another.
And another.  All moving
in the same direction, but
where?  Where
could they possibly be going?  But now,
as it passes me, the first corpse, a
male, gets an erection & in seconds
there’s a cloud of sperm floating on the tip
of its penis like a cartoon character’s
balloon speech, empty.  I’m tempted
to fill it - “Cast not thy seed...”  But now
the second corpse, a bloated female,
is giving birth, a child’s head protruding
from between the mother’s legs as though
it was driving a tank - Operation
Desert Storm.  “Turn back
before it’s too late!” But now
the third corpse, a boy, has gotten its legs
tangled up in a tree.  Intervention
might be necessary.  But before I can
it frees itself & goes floating off
covered with leaves.  Should I (poetic
licence) place a bird on the boy’s stomach
as well?  It’s a temptation I’m able
to overcome as I do the one to become
a corpse myself, to go floating off, destination
unknown, without a care in the world.
 
 
 
 
 
 

CHASSE

Ceausescu left laughing.
Try charming harder.
The platinum gag was my idea.
At which point the hunting simply hums.
A hymn in praise of human pelts.
Try charming harder.
Sing out what your price is.
Sorry not to have heard your giggle, was otherwise engaged.
If you have any Christians, it’s time to listen to them closely.
It was mine - that little fascist intuition.
From literal mud he crawled to run with literal dogs in.
The time it takes to tow a mother.
Hooded emissaries bring out their tubas for a blow.
At which point the hunting starts to complain.
About those tidewater gadgets that weren’t reported in prayer.
Meeting sheep with brutality - give it a try.
While they twitch your guilt.
Is pleasured, is more than you can bear.
The aluminium earplugs were my idea.
At which point the hunting simply spreads.
The Cantonese until their dead are as supple as ours.
Who still insist on budget sorrows.
Even though they know as well as we do.
That hence to whence isn’t really twice as much.
The diamond-studded blindfold was my idea.

Philip Hammial's fifteenth collection of poetry, Bread, was published in November 2000 by Black Pepper.

Justin Lowe
 

IVAN

The old man paid her by the hour
just to read to him

he would buy boxes of books for a dollar
bush poets, romances, the lives of obscure saints

it didn't seem to matter
he was nearing eighty and almost deaf

it was easy money
the strangest kind

but sometimes in the gauze of a 40 watt bulb
she noticed his hand disappear into a pocket

scratch there for a long time
her thing voice bobbing like a kite

he would grin and nod then
as though stirred to concurrence with the dead

sometimes he would mutter "I see I see"
or groan softly and remove his hand

other times he would edge off into sleep
his thick lips convulsing like the fingers of a fist

never once did he ask
why she needed the money

but one day as she crept out
trying her hardest not to wake him

she thought she heard him
whisper softly as a wing

thank you little one
now I see this country
 

THE REAL

as though one hazy afternoon
twenty catnap summers ago
all the play went out of our games

as though we put them aside like toys
whose batteries have run down
and shut ourselves away, creatures of perpetual twilight

as though there were no longer
any rules worth bending or hammering out
as though we were held in a prison

and were only just noticing
defined by a line we would one day cross
in a stranger's shoes, a vague horizon

where something always loomed:
the faint whiff of a storm
someone cooking in the next valley

and when we considered that moment
lurking behind dark clouds of portent and promise
the world suddenly seemed very still, very empty

a dusty playground of listless breezes
 
 
 

EINSTEIN

this species
is forever losing things

it is almost an appellation
constant as change

the treasures of Carthage, Teotihuacan
the great library of Alexandria

a thousand species of gold-tipped butterefly
all whispers on the wind

worlds and their creators vanished
without one tiny clutch of the daily round

not a single worn stone to be our touchstone
not even that cold comfort

all of it dead as lake Baikal
the creeping desters of Mali

time whispers
like sand through the fingers

kaput
all is history

even our gods
so prone to judge us

so certain theirs will be
the last word
 

CHILD'S ATLAS

like gods
hostage to their promises

the two
in two times two

how else do you think
the world grew?

it was the names.........

conjugating emptiness
the way tombstones cultivate platitudes

roam the deserts of this island -
go ahead, they're everywhere -

as often as not
all you'll find will be a name

some spastic retina
excised and shivering in the heat

waiting for a second
a third sun

to warm
this shadow world

All poems are taken from 'HUMANESQUE" due out next year through DEADPAN PRESS.

I am 36 years old and have been writing full-time for about a dozen years. I have travelled extensively, venturing in and out of trouble all around the world. I supplement my meagre income from writing by selling lyrics to bands - currently I have three separate contracts with two bands, one of whom, "The Whitlams", toured Canada last year with Blue Rodeo.

John West

"In The Mall"
 
 

1.

Black bag, black hair, coat

white shirt, pimples

over a hundred kilos

hunching his body along

and I ask myself

'How does he make a living?'
 
 

Face keen, hurrying, big belly wobbling

off to some interview or meeting

or to sell something

legs glued into one at the top

he's eighteen, twenty, but

'How will he make a living?'
 
 

and, 'Why do I worry?'
 
 

Each shop has its hard luck history

that was a fish shop

- no-one bought fish, then it sold cheese

no-one bought cheese, ho hum -

but something scratches my heart

his face, his staring eyes

a kid in man's body, desperate to please

a kid who'll be hit and hit.

2.

On a Friday night, a dozen kids

standing round, looking cool

the same jackets, pants, hair

but one girl, up to their waists

a "Short Person", chunky:

no-one is laughing.
 
 
 
 

"I Like it When Women Just Keep Walking"

like this woman in the petrol shop now, straight up to the counter, her eyes

     blue, her breasts not too small, not too big, her legs just long enough,

     her black coat brushing my leg as I push back against the lolly stand.
 
 

I like it when women just keep walking after divorce, after being left with

     two or three kids, with a fat and greasy mortgage and an ancient,

     unreliable car
 
 

and I like it when women just keep walking after marriage when they're left

     with a husband who throws scraps of food to their two year-old on the

     back lawn when he's minding her against his will but he doesn't object to

     the extra money coming in
 
 

and I like it when women just keep walking after being stood up on a date,

     when they drive around and see a friend and take a bottle of champagne

     with them and spend the evening laughing
 
 

and I like it when women just keep walking after being told by a man on the

    phone that their three month relationship has ended, that she shouldn't

    bother to ring him or to come round again, it's over and I like it when

    women just keep walking after their separated husband comes around

    and asks for sex and wheelies out of the driveway backwards in his car

    after she asks who the hell does he think she is
 
 

and I like it when a cool-eyed woman just keeps walking past me after

    walking through a pair of sliding doors.
 
 

"The Diagnosis"
 
 

The doctor's skin is even clearer

than that of the girls on magazine covers

and when she smiles her eyes are slightly crossed

the way beautiful women's eyes can be

her only fault is her habit of wearing fuzzy Cashmere sweaters

that give her an old fashioned, small-town-girl look

although this itself lends her a certain charm

she had, however, witnessed me at my worst

one day walking into a lift

as I was leaving after a long and sweaty shift

she nodded then rubbed her arm

and looked away

but today she is talking to Mr Stanos

telling him that he is going to die quite soon

in a month or two at most

that the cancer's like a rock

cemented to his ribs

her voice is like silk being drawn through a golden ring

and it makes me look out through the window

at the perfect summer day.
 
 

The Hair Brush
 
 

Mrs Smith was dying and amongst the trifles I talked with her each morning as I washed her was my hair brush. My wife had bought it for herself and hadn't liked it, it was an expensive one, a Mason and Pearson and as I brushed Mrs Smith's hair I'd say, "I have one of these; my wife gave it to me, she bought it for herself but didn't like it." On the third morning she interrupted me, "You told me!" she spat, and looked out the window at the rain.

John West lives in Melbourne with his wife and son. Many of his poems are about the people he meets as a nurse, a job he has had now for twenty years. His third collection Stuttering Towards Love from Walleah Press, Hobart was released in October 2000. He won the Melbourne Poets' Poetry Competition in 1998 and the Anticancer Council Poetry Competition in 1999.
 

Paul Hardacre

Hand Carved Idol from Minsk

In a packing crate, carefully wrapped in
newspaper I found the key to write on
cardboard in disjointed English spread
out exquisitely embroidered cloths and
blankets on the dirty flagstones curse
smart-mouthed private schoolboys cry
poor hunt neighbourhood cats with a blunt
kitchen knife and strangle all opponents
with standard issue KGB shoelace not as
ridiculous as it sounds the blood on your
hands tells its own story.

In a drain that flows down to the river,
under discarded branches and blood-clotted
syringes I found the ability to strike fear into
the hearts of friends cover my flesh in ash
cut oranges throw them about the cemetery
display scars from landmines and other
fraudulent tales of compulsory military
service three years spent shooting and
butchering your alleged Soviet brothers all
you get is a letter at the end of it all certifying
that you know at least twenty different ways
to regurgitate your medication, and that you
have been known to dislocate your left
shoulder at will.

In a cigarette box on a shelf above the
refrigerator I rediscovered an old amphetamine
habit, found myself laughing at the thought
of you explaining motifs symbols languages
then acting dumb playing dead so to speak
the cities of the world know the story a bitter
testament to those unfortunate comrades who
perished in a queue for bread or were incarcerated
for sitting on the floor of a grocery store, staring
at the empty shelves where once there had been
colourful American objects, perhaps even a
can of coke.

In the fire in the sky at night, I remember your
instructions : marry Irina flee to Lithuania make
a home in the forest contemplate the mantra of
the owl draw pictures of God on the inside of your
skull intimidate local troublemakers with an axe
if need be but above all else be patient find salvation
in the fact that the storm, like most things, will find you.

Thin

body stoned & paranoid listening to you read tales of one woman searching the great thar desert for motorcycle adventure & fresh curd lunches amongst the dunes rajput children burn camel eggs for fuel cook in blackened metal tophats wash tin plates with a mouthful of sand & water swap tales of a village of goats that walk upright speak urdu & delight in feasting upon thorns & the tracks of dung beetles in the next bit her camel man drums a green jerry can wrapped in hessian cooks chapati & curses the partition has four children and an illiterate wife & watching your freshly cut mouth shaping words & the ceiling fan shifting your hair & your feet swinging back & forth it’s all so tori amos - white horses, sleeping beauty & things are gonna change.

Sky Drumming

Wednesday: we leave Brisbane and the Ekka westerlies
and drive north to gunmetal warmth, the fractured exoskeletal
children of Granite.  At their cyclopean feet we build our

house of the world; rock-hop the brackish water of August
and sit down to a packed lunch of pain de campagne, tabouleh,
salad, hot Hungarian salami and chocolate, gas-ripened bananas

and a Fuji apple.  I take water and clamber over a battery of stones
to keep watch as you pee uphill from our towels, putting your heel to work
the sand gently into a crater.  You whip bikini bottoms to ankles

and I am laughing, your grotto voice a concerned: “Anyone coming?”
I answer “No” and you finish cat-like, attentive. Minutes later I study
you stretched stomach-down on a faded towel with a hang-glider motif,

propped up on your elbows, brown breasts falling; heavy with the promise
of toffee or sugared ginger pastilles.  With each wave the obsidian clacking of
ocean rocks grows louder, invading every lamination of thought with

the fossilised language of some long-extinct submarine insects.
Chewing gum, absorbed in that book about Baguio and kindly Japanese
officers with gifts of eggs and medicine, you have angled yourself away from

the sun and pulled your knitted hat low; and watching you I find myself thinking
how impossible it is that you ever could die, of anything.  Of how today at high
tide we hunted fish with goggles and bare hands, and invented names for the island

a few miles offshore where pandanus fires burn and aboriginal children fill days
dugong-dreaming.  Of how we made our own map from footprints, cuttlefish, and
the broken heads of gulls.  Of how I stroked that strip of hair between your legs,

and then lower, black waters lapping the Pillars of Heracles.

The Hill of Life

drinking strong & sweet tea
listening to Mal Morgan
climb dark stairs & tell
moon stories awake to the world
he says meditate on a bed of lime.

on my mattress red barbed wire
green plastic soldiers boys hold hands &
dream of the Pyramids & the bird
a princess parrot calls to me
wrestles plastic farm animals then
falls back content to dream

of street pedlars selling Ramakien battle scenes
and children combing smouldering heaps
of refuse & living beneath cars
in starving cinereous light.

to my right the monkey-king Hanuman
levitates on a cloud struggles with demonic agents
of Ravana then like a blazing comet he flies
fast & generous speedy & bright to the hills
where luminous plants shine as cold white fire

to the hills where day is night & night is day &
holy saints retreat to icy cliffs to contemplate trees &
stones & elephants atrophied limbs & coloured
veins of ore pockets of snow & falling rivers

to the hills where cheap wine is nectar & the obituary of a poet
is headline news & the dead have no choice but to huddle on the shelves
of the black library while those they left behind stand at the shore
of the dream-sea & announce I am all this, All this Life; I am all this.

Paul Hardacre is a professional writer and poet living in the inner city Brisbane suburb of West End.

His poetry has been widely published in literary journals throughout Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Japan, and the United States, including Westerly, Imago, Verandah, Cordite, Yomimono, )ism(, LiNQ, Hobo, Core, Jones Av., Southerly, Voiceworks, JAAM, and The Weekend Australian Review.

Paul is the editor of papertiger – Australia’s first CDROM journal of poetry.

In addition, Paul is an editor of verso Young Writers, and is Contributing Queensland Editor for the South Australian journal of poetry and poetics, Sidewalk.

Coral Hull

2. The Stray Dogs

A. Romance Of The Black & Tan Dog

He sat watching her - dark, compressed, as if
his entire head had been pushed in by thumbs.
Broad, in shadow. His discus form thrown over her.
She was a sprinter - a splintered twig, highly strung, a lean
mean tan dog, sunlit. Her eyes half shut.

When the time came for ‘selection’ - age, health &
temperament - he would not be chosen. He was too
sulky, beaten-up & of himself.
She was smaller - lighter, giving her the advantage.
If only she wouldn’t twist & yelp when they came to
collect her.

During that hour - each time she came
up to my hands through the wire - i touched
her velvet nose, shiny black with health. And her squinting
in the sun. Then she turned & went back to him.

B. The Show Off
 

he was a white bully cattle cross, a truckie’s dog, intelligent, articulate, the been around hound on roads & by petrol bowsers dog, the sitting up in the truck dog, a windscreen & cloud dog, the mack in the cabin, a smack on the rump dog, a road signs & far away places dog, but somewhere he got waylaid, side-tracked, dropped off, now he talks from up on the tin roof of his kennel, raof raof, raof raof, the bark of a dog kicked in the throat as a pup, but the truckie’s dog didn’t pause for breath, too much fast talking to do, until his bark grated on me & he just wouldn’t shut up, basically he overdid it, so i reached in through the wire, & turned him over on the roof & scratched his muscular pink stomach, with the short white hair & splotches of giraffe brown, this shut him up, for a time, & him keeping an eye out for other male dogs, as he let out a small groan, when i left the lost dogs home, that afternoon, his bark could be heard from the concrete pen, as i drove away, he thought i had been a sure thing

C. The Found Dogs’ Home

nothing matters except for wednesday’s dog/ a
98% chance his robust life will be wiped out
by week’s end/ by the animal-lover-pretenders
at the lost dogs’ home/ this is not an ‘animal
shelter’ & there is no such thing as ‘humane
destruction’/ here, we have truly lost dogs/ &
i didn’t save him/ the truckie’s dog/ looking
down from up on the tin/ it was the clearest
autumn day filled with his barking/ up there
like a white cloud looking down/ at home
three dogs are beside me/ sleeping on the
carpet/ i can only say i tried/ & that all dogs
in my care are living/ bobby is the newest
addition/ his floppy old ears point out: the
victory sign/ but my words mean nothing
if not accompanied by a good home/ for now
the memory of the truckie’s dog left behind/
waiting for me or someone else until he dies/
i will live my life without his lovely presence/
as we all must/ closing our eyes to the kill/ &
in this way accepting it/ even to closed eyes
those dogs bark/ trying to piece it together/ this
odd outcome, strange abandonment, miserable
weather/ during the eight day period they bark
for their lives/ barking louder as they are left
behind/ so that you will never forget them/
even in this hour of suffering/ dog saliva is
on my fingers & my observations are of the
pleasure & goodness in dogs/ it is here, my
place is found/ amongst three perfectly saved
dogs/ in the collingwood found dogs’ home
 

III. TWO BOXES FOR BINDO

1. Dog As Landscape

The function of the overweight backyard cattle dog
is to look for cool areas & warm areas.
When he gets up to shuffle to the kitchen door
he creates mammoth shade.
All winter he is touched by frost.
Overfed in the hot weather, he sleeps it off
for months. Lies down in the outback town.
A waste of life within his own layers of fat.
Three times the dog he used to be.
Dad said, ‘The vet is onto Kevin about it,
but ‘e won’t stop feedin’ ‘im, kids pass
& look over the fence & say, hey mum,
come & look at the fat dog.’
Bindo glares at them, but
he barely blinks an eyelid as I pass.
He’s heavy on the land like a big load of gidgee logs.
The daylight weighs heavy on him.
He’s being forced down by the sheer size of his day.
Bindo’s folds spew out over the mown grass like lava.
He kills the lawn he drags along, dad said, ‘e can’t
even stand to piss like a dog, so
‘e just sits there, hating ‘is life, as it all runs down
over ‘is legs.’
It was that injured red look in his eye, soured, bashed up.
The kind of dog that cannot be trusted anymore.
That could bite the hand that feeds him.
Because in the past
the hand that fed him
has also beaten him up.
Underneath he’s just a big ruined pup, pup as big as the sun.
What’s he thinking in there? Moth eaten
old dog. Just how is he suffering in there?
It’s like I could reach deep into his layers of fat, like down
into an old well to pull him out.
To pull out the dog that he was & release him.
But by the look of him, he would take half my hand off
& my face if I got too close.
Funny, all it would take is a few walks & a good diet,
but his owner won’t do that.
I imagine Bindo, regaining his youth, galloping along
as a skinny new dog, with all his skin sagging.
But I also think his owner should not beat him up &
he should go to a dog shrink.
If there was ever a dog that needed a shrink it’s the owner.
But dad doesn’t say anything.
It’s better that way, less trouble for everyone.
As for Bindo,
you don’t know whether he’s going to bite you or not
& he’s blaming you for his mistreatment, when you walk past to the toilet.
He’s blaming everything that moves,
so that he doesn’t have to blame his sadistic owner, whom he still loves.

2. Going To The Toilet Where Bindo Sits On The Path

‘e downe hurt cha
‘e only bring da blud
‘e bite dat Bindo
‘e ‘ook onter ya
‘e wowne let go
‘e bring da blud
but ‘e downe hurt cha
i say get inter ar Bindo
‘e knows
‘e grabs a dawg’s ear
‘e ‘olds on
‘e wowne let go
no fear ‘e bite alright
‘e ‘ook on
‘e downe let go
look out for ‘im
‘e downe run ya know
‘e like a lion
‘e wait for ya
‘e wait in the graarse
for ya
when ya walk parrst -
‘e ‘ook on
‘e ‘ook onter ya on the ankle
on da tendar bit dere
on da back dere
‘e wait like a lion
‘e wait for ya
all day
& night
ter go ter da toilet
‘e downe hurt cha though
‘e only bring da blud
‘e not fat, no
‘e big dawg -
powerful
look out ‘ere ‘e come
git inter ar Bindo
‘e ‘ook on
‘e downe let go
‘e sink ‘is teeth in, but
‘e downe hurt cha though
‘e only bring da blud
 

10. EUROPEAN RED FOX  (VULPES VULPES)

the black and white rooster whose tail feathers blew like emergency streamers,
puffed out his chest for the nervous hens and crowed all the short afternoon,
there was a starving fox prowling around, night comes so soon in august,
rock and tree sundials predict the short day ahead, hens go to the sheds early,
the ice that blows off the snowy mountains is a cool wind clock,
the european red fox was first released near melbourne for recreational hunting,
it is hunted still, hounded deeper into the inland from the snowy country,
in fifty years it was in western australia, driven towards the edge, widely spread,
slimline, on the red trot, like a ribbon blowing between trees and roots,
vulpes vulpes throughout the lightly wooded areas, rarely a life beyond four years old,
trapped, shot, run down and a lack of prey, they are exposed to this life in the full,
born to be hounded for four years, four years of the great disappearing act,
four years of flooded silence, four years of sunsets, aridity and drought,
they bring in their bright eyed cubs to face the small term, in a land that is hostile to foxes,
that striking red coat is one year into its sentence, it’s hunger inland on legs,
as it makes its way towards the desert marsupial, chook pen, the wild fruit, the dying lamb
and road kill carrion, it makes its way towards a darkness greater than sun down,
it has learnt to be adaptable, by keeping its secrets close to the crumbling edge,
in a land ruled by the minds behind machines that harvest wheat and cattle,
it slithers along the same routes taken by the rainbow serpent, prisoner to an island,
vulpes vulpes watches the extinction of the numbat and the black faced rock wallaby,
it is witness to them being chopped up into dirt by transnational corperations,
economical compost for big crop growers and animal harvesters,
one fox is blamed for the extinction of a nation’s wilderness, yet it will soon join them as nil,
as we turn everything into meat, the meat for us to eat and shit out,
it comes red with blood from ripped haemorrhoids, soon we are busily shitting out foxes,
we bring in our buckets to the government offices, for the payment of a bounty,
when proof of death is provided, the more elusive variety are poisoned with 1080,
poisoning campaigns are carried out, by the politically correct, the greenie,
biological control combined with conventional control, animal murder is conventional,
for vulpes vulpes, slim red dogs, with soft white bibs, a long way and time from europe,
one half grown cub was curled up in the middle of the road mid morning,
an unsealed back road that no car had driven along for at least that day,
there is something about a pristine road that no-one has driven along,
that warm red dust that hasn’t been disturbed, that an australian red fox can curl up on

ZOO WOLF THAT ESCAPED DURING A HURRICANE LED SAFELY HOME
 

A zoo wolf who escaped during a hurricane in July, roamed the Alabama coast surviving on tourists’ leftovers, was led back home by the owner of a dog the wolf took a liking to. “I’d jiggle Rocky’s chain and he’d just follow along,” David Peleschak said of his mile long walk with the Arctic wolf named Paladin, including crossing a busy four-lane highway. He was one of three wolves that escaped from Wilderness Land during the hurricane. One was recaptured and the other was shot down. Paladin was spotted roaming the Resort Island repeatedly, but zoo workers never got close enough to catch him. Peleschak and his wife, Kim, were getting their children ready for school, when he saw the 40-pound family dog, playing in the yard with the 100-pound, snow-white wolf. The wolf toppled the dog like an avalanche of snow. The old house dog slid down the wolves back and trod knee deep in the waist high snow white fur. Kim said, “The wolf follows Rocky. I’ll bet if you were to walk Rocky, he’d follow you.” Peleschak put a leash on his dog and started the one mile trip to Wilderness Land. Once inside the compound, Paladin’s wild resurfaced and he bolted, but a zoo worker shot him with a tranquilliser dart. “It was either that or a bullet by the police,” he said. The cage where Paladin lay doped up, was one world short of this world. The domestic dog was dragged home to the backyard. It was the first different canine the wolf had spoken with. During his four moths of freedom, Paladin apparently spent much of his time in heavily wooded Gulf State Park, in search of the Arctic. That big grey wolf followed the wind to where he knew best, which was Alaska, the frozen territories that howled out the bones. Once the tourists thinned out in Fall, he became more visible, eating out of garbage cans at restaurants and grocery stores. He came into the town with the first snow. As big as the north on the edge of winter, Paladin covered the garbage cans and the back entrances of restaurants with his foreign hunger. “He never harmed anyone on the run and Rocky adored him,” Kim said. “Now if I’m really upset or joyful, I go into my large room with the high ceilings and howl.”
 
 

The Mexican Grey Wolf Returns To The Wild
 

I am not my childhood anymore. It has gone like a puddle from a street, after a freak thunderstorm. There are dried up areas inside me crying out for rain, hard on the edges, soft in the centres. Drought-affected in my early thirties, I have been no match for the sun. The rain comes in to fill the patches and it floods.

When I try to see where I have come from, everything seems a long way off. It’s seven Adelaide beaches away. Telecommunication wires cannot reach that far, only the wind can. There is no use stepping into a coastal phone booth. Screaming rage into currents of hot dry air, is best you can hope to do.

I am turning back for what I have left behind. Imagine being caught in a fire or a flood and leaving yourself there to die. A disaster, my childhood has been destroyed. The last time it happened, there was a nuclear bomb in the loungeroom, glowing softly behind the venetian blinds, cooking the fishtank.

You left your handbag on a country train and felt panic, your house keys, wallet and a photograph of your past. Somewhere part of you hurtled south to Colac station. Mexican wolves take their first steps from the cage. The female and her nine-month-old pup return to Arizona, for the first time in decades.

A wolf pad falls on silent earth. They have been here before. This whole land has old wolf songs stored inside it. It has waited for their come back. They have left the zoo and captive breeding program behind. The Apache National Forest extends before them for hundreds of miles. They are small grey dots in space.

In 1976 this great grey wolf had been placed on the endangered species list. Not long after, the last wild lobo seen in that area, was found dead at the southern tip of the Arizona-New Mexico line. The sun bleach-dried the body, whose jaws ate sand. In this country there was enough room and space enough for a wolf.

“I grew up in this country,” he said. “I always had a sense that something was missing.” The Mexican grey wolf is being returned to the wild. A bright eye devours the landscape. Maps of mountains, valleys and rivers with scent as the borders, were already built within them. It is hard to keep from shouting.

Rural Victoria
 

The car headlights jumped up over a small incline. We ducked down in our chunky jackets in the dark scrub. There had been the choice of leaving the car down the street, or parking well out of the area and then hiking across swampy paddocks, with bulls at one end and barbed wire fences at the other. We hid for sometime thinking that the house lights were car lights. All the dogs had gone. Only one old beagle bitch remained since the confiscation. She was chained up to a steel pole at the far end of the property. It was redneck backwater territory, a few kangaroos loose in the top paddock of the mind country. There was a man on the other side of a road shooting at a possum up in his front yard tree, the crazy dog running circles beneath the branches, half mad with fear and the kill. The owner reached for the old rifle on drunken Saturday nights alone. One day it would be the dog’s turn to go. The old codger who owned this dog farm was senile. He had a shot gun and could have fired on any one of us in the dark. If I was him and eight people in black were in my yard, then I’d grab for the gun as well. The place was just about closed down. He got up and the lights came on, all the activists running and tripping over the debri. Someone twisted an ankle and yelped to stifle the pain, but the old bloke was only cough and phlegm on his way from the bedroom to the bathroom. Weeks before when the place was being inspected, we drove right up to his loungeroom window, and there he was his bare hairy chest looking straight out at us. He was the man who kept dogs in pits, who blinded puppies under upturned ten gallon drums, then after showing a council inspector, suddenly he dropped the drum back down, so that one of the puppies who had poked his head out was slowly decapitated. He was a moron, a cruel old bastard, a stinking specimen of a human being. We met them all the time, we see the bad work they are doing.
 

Mist, pine forests, darkness, valleys in flood by fog, looked like lakes but they were paddocks, cold, barren, unnamable, five hundred tiny fluffy terriers and soft warm brown cockaspaniels, just love to run my hands along the side of them, the dogs were caked in mud, straw and their own shit, grey and white runny shit all up our clothing, sticking to our legs, prolapsed uterus’s from over breeding, that is when the uterus just caves in and falls out of the anus, the tired old breeding mother trying to shit out her own organs, because her life has become shit, hundreds of neglected barking dogs in the mist, two dog farm managers inside the house, in the city if one dog barks, the entire street is opening its windows in annoyance or concern, yet these people hear the boredom, the distress, the loneliness, the physical pain, the freezing winter, the lack of shelter, in the barking of hundreds upon hundreds of disease ridden dogs, still they manage to sleep through it, they live through it, they live surrounded by it day in day out, they shovel shit, hit dogs on the head with shovels and make their slow profit, their psyches must be shot, somewhere they must hold the troubled guilt inside, to mistreat and farm a dog, pet shop owners love the puppies produced from these farms, they hate animals and love money, they know, like the dog farmer knows, the average public want small and fluffy puppies, but just look at the origin of them, the grey shit steams and melts in my palm, the straw is wet, it is raining, mist below zero, they sleep on cracked wet wooden boards, concrete or mud, food bowls are full of straw, sloppy dog food and shit, dogs are racing to the backs of the pens, some cringe, others still wagging their tails, the one beneath the old box with the chain buried deep into his neck will attack, his insanity buried in there with him, he is beyond hope, this place churns out products, shit and uterus’s, it is a puppy factory, the dogs in the pet shops come from it, meanwhile thirty thousand dogs a year are killed at the lost dogs home, we have surplus dogs, we destroy life, but still be churn out more, in chasing the eternal profit, with each troubled bark our psyches are shot, tonight we had to leave five hundred dogs behind, eating shit and rain.
 

I see the country in a different way. Rural is a machinery for breaking down life into human consumption. Yellow paddocks cleared and holding early morning mist are Victorian. Trees have been broken down. A magpie sitting along the fence post is preening himself. It is called a common bird but he is persistence. He has managed to avoid the crop harvester that sweeps up everything of the land into itself. The magpie is a rare survivor amongst the prickly yellow gorse, that moves across the fields as impenetrable as rocks. This rampaging gorse growing so much, as though it tried to dig its way back to the United Kingdom. The country is industry waste, farm chemical, and prickly gorse. All those sheds and suffering animals locked inside them. There is a huge human made reservoir that has flooded the valley, clearing paddocks by drowning them. This toxic water is grey beneath a grey sky. One of the things that ran into this reservoir is cat shit and piss from a cat breeder. There had been complaints about her locking the cats in a tiny tin shed. We see the shed in the distance, and the way that it shines silver even on the dull days. We can hear all the cats meowing inside. A racket went on as the tin door scraped along cement. We don’t stay around too long, as we don’t want to push our luck. Many cats are trapped in cages. They will never see sunlight or breathe the open air at night. The shed is full of junk. A lot of the junk obscures our view. The cats are literally crazy. The stench of cat urine fills the air like paint stripper. My throat is burning as we cross the paddocks in the dark. Cats yowl really loud in the night with their flattened back ears, and their huge unforgiving eyes as big as planets. We can hear them meowing in the sheds surrounded by prickly gorse, calling out to something that never comes close. There is something about all that empty land and all those sheds full of animals. Where I live anymore doesn’t matter.

Les Wicks

OUTSIDE BOORANGA WRITERS' CENTRE

Come down in refuge from the peaks, the currawong lands
& its branch is familiar as an old couch.

He seizes the pod & though that beak
often sings with a flagrant ferocity
it is now a sharp tool which splits
& discards -
husk falls like of any old flesh

The meat within is not swallowed immediately -
rolled with pleasure, then crushed.
Its oil digested to shimmers of black wings,
the tossed exertion of flight.

Two poets sit on the porch,
vow to keep trying.
                                 Les Wicks

HINTS FOR BOATMEN

Those tell tale eddies - on the river you can spot obstructions,
her tricks, your own  wet ruin.

Don't let yourself settle
for the treacherous sleep
of a peace induced as water sings to veins.

The levy banks promised this town
will never fear the Murrumbidgee.
Fish live according to their nature. Along the path bicycles,
old men & their Labradors -
dust rising like a first instalment on collapse.

Waters' scratched history, a muttering of  mud
& native fowl call above the bets
on tomorrow's rain.
 

                                 Les Wicks
WHAT PASSES FOR STILL
 

If I tried to make the pathway bleed
with my pen.

Talking with the winery across the road -
I listen & it ferments.

This brittle time of year when a rag of cloud
turns our sleepy winter peace
to a matchbox full of shivers.

Occasional applause
from a limp storm birthing on the range.

This world is not built for persuasion.
                                 Les Wicks
LES WICKS    has been published widely in Australia & elsewhere. His five books are "The Vanguard Sleeps In" (Glandular, 1981), "Cannibals" (Rochford St,1985),"Tickle" (Island, 1993) & "Nitty Gritty" (Five Islands, 1997) & "The Ways of Waves" (Sidewalk, 2000)."varied, nimble, humane & well timed" - Jennifer Maiden.
He's performed at festivals, schools, prisons etc. Runs workshops &Meuse Press which focuses on poetry outreach projects.

Tricia Dearborn

MANGO LUST

your ripeness beckons
seduces my tongue
I take off my ring
inhale your aroma
fetid-sweet and
heavy-lush

peel back your skin, exposing
soft roughness of the
underneath

slicing slivers of yielding flesh
that fill my mouth with
lusciousness
and after-tang

serrated bottom teeth strip
sweet flesh from
the seed, release
the subtle tartness
near your core

the whole seed in
my mouth, I
suck
lay it down
reluctantly

then lift to my nose
once more
the seed, bedraggled
golden-furred
and
eyes closed
breathe the fragrance
that remains

FRANKENSTEIN'S BATHTUB

steam peels roiling from the surface
of the water
like vapour from a beaker
in an old horror movie

at the far end of the tub a stumpy candle
adds its small excess to daylight,
flickering in the icy breeze from the window
illuminating miniature storms in the fog

the weather's bad outside the castle tonight

would Frankenstein's monster have bathed?
those 18th century types were
notoriously grubby-
and his stitches too precarious
too precious

I imagine him soaking, dreading
the sudden drift of red sinew
mottled with fat, the seeping of
his borrowed blood

and I'll admit there are days I'm
surprised I pass for human

meanwhile,
I lean back snug
in my waterproof skin

when I lift my foot from the water
it smokes like a torch

PROOF

I think, therefore I am,
said Descartes, but

while he thrice denied
the body, his neurones

pulsed with electric
solutions, his blood

pumped iron and the
bellows of his chest

dragged from
the protesting air

molecules to feed
his ravening lungs.

On his slow days
(when perhaps he found

the proof of his existence
less convincing)

I imagine him
looking for reassurance

to his face in the glass
oblivious to

the fingerprints
and mist of breath

that proved him
as surely as his reflection

or what his mind
made of it.
 
 

             selected by John Knight & Lyn Reeves
 
 

             even in autumn
             cherries the wild birds missed
 

                   slowly to the ground
                   it flutters, joins the others:
                   the winning ticket

                                                                   John Ward
 
 

                   long after death
                   his slippers on the floor
                   pigeon-toed

                                                              Vi Mathieson
 
 

                   in a winter storm
                   rain-stained
                   a white camellia blooms

                                                               Marietta Elliott
 
 

                   the romance writers
                   meet weekly
                   to write about romance

                                                           Gloria B. Yates
 
 
 

                   rain water
                   a solitary petal
                   drowning

                                                           pym schaare
 
 

                   first reluctant
                   jacaranda blossoms -
                   another october
 

                   city gardens
                   two drinks later
                   summer sun still lingers
 

                   sun sinks into the hills
                   my shadow
                   one with darkness

                                                       Katherine Samuelowicz
 
 

                   light frost
                   ice crystals glisten
                   on a fallen leaf
 

                   windy day
                   a young crow teeters
                   on the spade handle

                                                              Sue Mill
 
 
 

                   my sister limps
                   into the lottery office;
                   Easter Monday
 

                                                           Alma Bird
 
 

                   reunion kisses the clash of scents
 

                   guests gone the leftovers taste delicious
 

                   washing up
                   mixing with forks & suds
                   the same old thoughts

                                                               Carla Sari
 

                   early morning --
                   too tired
                   to brush flies away

                                                             Matt Hetherington
 
 

                   midday sun
                   undersides of camellia leaves
                   the veins showing through

                                                               ross sampson
 
 

                   jumbo stopover
                   leaves no time for
                   cherry blossoms
 

                   a love letter opened    a vapour trail
 

                                                                Ross Clark
 

                   cyclone warning -
                           every window
                   crossed out
 

                   surf track -
                   the memorial plaque records
                   an old drowning

                                                              John Bird
 
 

                   open day --
                   raindrops pimple
                   the quadrangle
 

                   small plane
                   propeller blurs its shadow
                   on the ocean
 

                   slight movement
                   hundreds of soldier crabs
                   turn about as one

                                                                   Janice M. Bostok
 

                   packing up --
                   behind the drawer
                   a crumpled letter
 

                   late afternoon
                       my shadow walks
                           over the lake
 

                   dawn service
                   the cry of gulls

                                                       Vanessa Proctor

 "Photos ©1998 John Davies, http://www.davies.lu/Photos/".

For a long time there has been an argument for the australain soul in art  desert/bush v beach/urban, or so many say. in fact, Austarlai has , for most of white settlement, been one of the most urnbanised places in the world. It makes a certain sense that these extremes in visuals weave around the poetry. -Les Wicks

Closing Words

    Since starting this ezine, I've had opportunity to read the poetry of many people, from a number of countries.  I have become enamoured with the work of Australia.  It combines both the familiar and the exotic.  The poets are very much a part of their culture and unique environment.  They reveal a sophistication that is with all urban cultures and yet, they reveal and revel in their landscape.  Also, there is a passion for words and imagery.  This passion looks to history, wild life and politics for inspiration and for expression.  I've enjoyed reading the works as they've come to my mailbox.
    You may wonder why a Canadian would put an issue on Australian poets, well, if you've read them, you can understand my own feelings of passion for the literature of this fascinating land.
    I do thank all those who contributed to the issue, as well, special thanks to Les Wicks, for spreading the word through his mailing list and to  John Knight & Lyn Reeves for gathering together the haiku's which are featured in this issue. To Coral Hull for "spreading the word" as well.

Next month, the theme will be 'Spirituality'.  A number of poems have already been submitted and there's room for more.
 If you have a poem, essay, short story, review- anything that has to do with literature and the use of words, you can contribute to this ezine.  Just send it to:  pabear_7@yahoo.com
        You can write letters, and if wish, I'll print it.
    As always, the material is copyrighted by the original creators of the work.  Respect their efforts.  The rest is copyright.
 ©2001.  "Above Ground Testing" accepts poetry, short stories, reviews, essays, photographs and artwork of all styles.  If you want more information, visit the homepage and follow the link to the guidelines.  Send your work to: pabear_7@yahoo.com.    Do write, also, if you want your letter printed, I can do that too.   Hey, I can do anything, its my ezine.  Also, if you want to say 'hi', that's acceptable too.If you want more information about this issue, go to the table of contents.