In black and white

Where my father
wheeled me around,
I now wheel him.
Where my father fed me,
I now feed him.
Together we watch Buster Keaton,
who sits on the handlebars
and manoeuvres through traffic,
not realising the cyclist
has fallen off.
Who sails a car in the water,
slips on banana skins,
and can only afford a dollar box of candy
for his sweetheart.
I always cry at sad movies.

Sue Clennel

Risen

Dee’s chair receives her
regal and tender the green
brush against skin embroidering its
print flesh insensate
as risen dough I imagine
the yeast-smell of morphine smudges her
eyes to bruise she sits
breast bare like the belly
she once showed me smooth then scarred and waits
for my sponge to clean
her from the blood-crusts of fresh
stitches the pus yellow like yolk her
room acts like she’s not
been away my thighs strain from
the weight of my body kneeling I
wet the towel’s edge
rough on the skin’s frilled edges
wince and suck of breath that hurts she says
stop my arms are
not what they should be my hands
are wet watered blooded her body’s
excretions and I mumble
sorry will my hands
take her split mended flesh be gentle

Ivy Alvarez

 

Menubar Time
Dialog box on Power Macintosh
Your clock is not correct.
Check for malfunction.

In the deep south of the Azure Ocean
the gilded island of Menubar lies
the secret of a travel agent’s
glitzy brochure.
Waves sizzle into sand
sucking it wet and dry
and wet again. Lust surfs
catching rides everywhere.
Vowels and consonants burn
on the beach
then slink inland to the village square
where the clock whirls time in all directions
after an unknown law.
Words sonnet, rhymes Iyric on shady seats
drink villanelles and ogle iambs making free verse
in the alleys
where feasts of fiction chant the cobblestones
pure gold.

Lesley Fowler

 

Every Day Returning to Dusk

At the day’s withdrawing
snowballs of cockatoos sky dive
these steep bird boxes of bricks and glass
their guttural squawks leap
from balconies and ledges
re-calling, re-grouping then retiring
Before the flying foxes each nightfall
his voice arises, “Davv-eey!”
the long low siren reaches out
but who is he calling?
his flat mate, dealer, someone who owes money?
get a phone and shut up!
it’s clockwork like the commuters
but they’re indifferent to his forlorn crow, “Davv-eey !”
Hovering on the day’s thermals
the voice never receives a reply
until looking down the pockmarked chasm
little Davy wags to this summoning
retreating from his nightly sniff and pee
flocking to get home

Faith de Savigne

Bulbs
in the pool
the bellies
arc and curve
tulip bulbs promising
crimson cervix budding
velveteen plush placenta blossoms
the bellies curve like pumpkins like ripe gourds
like musical instruments that glisten as they sound
the shapes of those soon-to-be-milky breasts awaken
our lips to the urgent suckling movements of deep dreaming
full as water bombs they move brazen as tossing beach balls
the syrup of late light gilds their curves like cupolas, like domes
reminding us of the golden meniscus of brandy in brandy balloons
the women’s standing legs grow out of the tiled water like curving
wooden banisters on grand stairways like the carvings in ancient
churches elaborate yet rounded enriched with enduring strength
their pale feet waver at the bottom of the pool’s shimmer
uncertain about how these muscular ground-gripping
toes went from being curlicue candy baby-toes
their mothers caressed in all their succulent
perfection to the toes of women who grow
their own miracle babies in fecund silence
in the pools and in the bedrooms
in the factories and in the shops
in the hospitals and in the offices
the bellies arc their potent song
the bellies shimmer their promise
like the tight-skin shining curve of
bulbs in winter

Gina Mercer

LOUNGE SUITE

My mother, who is on her own now, loves to tell the story of how I set the school on fire. She remembers, more and more, the colour of the sofa we were sitting on and the cockiness of my leg pressed against Rob’s. The sofa, she says, was grey - a fine textured fabric not unlike a well-made Tramps Menswear suit bought from the store where my father worked when I was six. In fact, it is the same, this fabric, it’s a perfect match of a suit he used to wear. My mother says there’s horseplay involved, there’s cigarettes and wilfulness and disregard for rules.
Rob’s sitting back with one arm stretched across my shoulders, the other on the armrest, idly flicking a cigarette between his fingers. It’s our senior year and we’re in the year twelve common room. She’s not sure exactly how it starts, but she knows Rob doesn’t light the cigarette until long after the bell, when all the teachers are back in their classrooms or at least turning blind eyes. The sofa or lounge suit as she sometime calls it, is large, one of those old club lounges with big beaded armrests that obscure any view from the door.
It’s only lately she’s realised sex is involved. Rob blows out smoke in rings, presses his leg back to mine, nudges me a bit, before we slide down in the seat and I’m giggling while he blows me in the face with smoke. I open my mouth to eat it in. Then I lean over him, take a drag from his cigarette and blow it back. We kiss and slide down further until we’re completely out of sight, lying flat, with my school uniform askew. My underwear gets pushed aside and he unbuttons his school trousers so we can do it, as much as possible, fully clothed, keeping everything as quiet as we can. She calls it swanky sex, but quick too. We were young, she says, and everything’s like that, easy and quick.
When we finish I wipe myself with my panties, then push them down into the corner of my school bag, before heading off to class.
It’s only later, once we’re out of there, that you catch the faintest whiff of smoke. Just a whiff, that’s all. Nothing more, until that climactic moment when the lounge suddenly blows up and explodes into flames, the way she knows foam covered things always do.
My mother loves this story. She tells it all the time and leaves me running around in damage control. There was no sofa, there was no fire. I tell my brother, sisters, aunts, neighbours and friends. Rob was my friend but he left before year twelve. There was no lounge suit. My mother laughs at me. Of course it was true, she says, I was called up to the school. When she says this I could scream, for short of sending out flyers, what else can I do?
My sister likes the part where the suit-covered sofa explodes into fire. “It’s as if Dad himself bursts into flames,” she says, “buttons flying everywhere like bullets.”

Andrea Gawthorne

BETWEEN CALENDARS Today, December 31st, the departmental calendar reads 365 on the left, zero on the right. The deck of timeship desk is clear, a deck of cards played out. Tomorrow I won’t be here to flick controls creating days or on a new page in a new calendar find 365 on the right, and, on the left, 1. The machine is delicately balanced. Sensitively, it carries us through categories till like the rider in The Time Machine we may chance upon a world beyond our reckoning and, looking around, see nothing we can recognize.