Summer Poetry Feature, Part 4: Cronin, Hill, Sant, Shapcott, Collins, Gorton, Shepherdson [01.12.2011]
Summer is. And so are these poems – here and now – for your reading pleasure. Part 4 of 4 to the SPUNC Summer Poetry Feature is below. If you missed them, be sure to have a read of our Winter and and Spring features as well.
Part 1: Skovron, Middleton, Spence, Mahemoff, Lowe, Brown, Curnow
Part 2: Wright, Gillam, Edgar, Mittal, Page, Reeves, Hecq
Part 3: Lloyd, Clemens, Caddy, Ryan, Cooke, Rowland
Part 4: Cronin, Hill, Sant, Shapcott, Collins, Gorton, Shepherdson
from our life is a box. / Prayers Without a God ~ MTC Cronin
we thought of ourselves
now we need poetry
we observed ourselves
by the water
did we drink?
we followed the line of ourselves
to where the sun marked the ground
with the beauty of the last tree
when did we write the first poem
sent out to meet the horizon?
there came slowly a day
when all vision troubled us
we turned ourselves into our words
which until then
had not lived
~
the prayer for those who speak
is sung
in the minute before the hour
in the song on the bridge
for what passes beneath
in the one shoe for the other
for the other that is spoken to
see the mouth make a brick
a bird, a plug of the ocean
in a test-tube
the striking green of the rainforest cycad
is no trouble for the tongue
it goes even to curl on those little stones
that have never existed
those imaginary stones
in the no-sun
This excerpt is from MTC Cronin’s collection our life is a box. / Prayers Without a God published by Papertiger Media.
Sutra ~ Barry Hill
The Lotusbird, before it runs on lilies
must lift its toes, along with its legs—
daddy long toes to succulent stems.
Then it must raise its head
level with the dip of its bud eye
to step again— meditative, still dry.
It’s silly, the way we are surprised.
The lilypads are its heaven, luminosity its food.
It goes as lightly as a prayer.
The red comb, rooster wild, is wisdom.
It wears its heart on the petals.
Its take off is like leaping flames
wings as vertical as falling ash:
an ascent with a splash of lotus bloom—
levitation in a shaft of lemon white.
This poem appears in Barry Hill’s collection (with paintings by John Wolseley), Lines for Birds, published by UWAP.
The Spider in the Kitchen ~ Andrew Sant
I fed the spider beef.
Summer flies
in town were oddly few.
The spider took it in her stride,
tackled the bloody meat
with her black legs and due
surprise. She liked it.
Mince, matchhead size, soon
burned in her abdomen. She thrived
and bred, though I never saw
her dark stranger call. The babies
were little monsters, big
and hungry. I obliged. Fillet steak.
No-one else now entered
the lovely kitchen until,
one day, a wise guy
– distant relative in his teens –
who’d got wind of my arachnids,
looked down on me and from
his core, swore in a baritone
it was the hormones in the meat.
His bent head proved the ceiling now
too low. The spiders stretched
themselves across wide windows.
I looked heartlessly into their eyes.
This poem appears in Andrew Sant’s collection, Fuel, published by Black Pepper Publishing.
Parts of Us ~ Thomas Shapcott
1
We are not born with shadows. They are clambering weeds
that crept up on us while we were not looking.
They do not follow us – we follow them
wondering if there are barbs as well as seed-heads.
Shadows take over whole paddocks of our childhood
but that is not to say there is comfort in numbers:
we had to learn to count.
2
The eyes are faulty interpreters. They pretend to know
the language but do not listen to accents
and are too confident for their own good.
3
Stop! But I did not stop:
neither did you. Some things
exist purely for the sake of rhetoric.
Some things simply call attention to themselves
or merely demand attention.
We are not good at obedience.
4
The tongue is a reckless speleologist;
it is quite unaware of confinement
and is perpetually eager to discover Lascaux.
5
The ears are trapdoor spiders
until the bulldozer clears the paddock
and leaves all our cleverness burried in rubble.
Bulldozers are mobile phones before technology
crept into our side pocket.
6
Never ask the nose for solutions.
Solutions are once upon a time
and smell is older than that.
Smell takes more getting used to
than the thought of a stranger’s excrement
in the corner of your own living-room
right on the carpet.
7
Laughter has horns on the underside
but it has green leaves that shine in the dark.
8
You smiled once. I caught it and held it in my hands
even though the wind was blowing in my face.
9
Tears are dry colours pretending to be a rainbow:
they own nothing but you can’t tell them that.
10
Did I commit a sigh?Breathing is always dangerous.
It is like a telephone message in a foreign language –
one that you think you once knew.
11
That was not a baby’s cry –
it was the electrical impulse surfacing from far underground,
warning the reptile brain of the death of ancestors.
12
Strange how the skin is not party to the brain’s confidences.
It tells its own story and is never truthful.
But what is truth? All things are relative
and the brain is the least reliable of witnesses.
13
To ask questions is to act interrogator.
The witness box has many exits
and witnesses for the prosecution
are not always going to get the colour right –
that is, if there really is a colour.
14
The location of God is in the navel.
The umbilical cord has been severed.
We are on our own.
15
Bones wait. It is not that they have any patience
with calendars. They remember too much, they hoard things,
and when all is said they know there is no last word.
16
Hair tells us we once loved.
Hair is almost impossible to manage
and yet it manages us most of the time.
Hair is the underside of a cloud’s imagination
but, caught in the mouth, it brings us down to earth
like a shower sink-hole after shampoo.
17
Did I say we are born without shadows?
And you believed me?
18
The word ‘dance’ is on my lips.
But dance is not music,
as if music can be notated.
Notation is the mark of our failure.
It is our mark.
This poem appears in Thomas Shapcott’s collection, Parts of Us, published by UQP.
Damage ~ T M Collins
for John Andrew Tate
The Needle and the Damage Done
Neil Young
Often I hear the
click of guns but
later I realise it’s
the tapping of the
spoon on the dish,
the vein bulging,
the fist clenched,
eyelids half shut,
trees outside shake
their leaves, cars
strut dirty paintwork
as the nick happens
and the shitter enters
along a slow blue link
to the brain.
This poem appears in T M Collins' collection, The Crooked Floor, published by Ilura Press.
The Affair ~ Lisa Gorton
Our last illicit weekend,
a little tired and driving
to some Blue Mountain
getaway or other.
On the motorway
it is the car that overheats
whoosh
I think a whale is
caught in our engine.
We wait in the car
trying to feel
absolute about each other.
They all drive past.
This poem appears in Lisa Gorton’s collection, Press Release, published by Giramondo Publishing.
dreizehn ~ Nathan Shepherdson
Trakl’s voice, a voice like a second self – Kokoschka
soaked with rain
drinking wine
you sat in the painter’s studio
a studio with black walls
the dark adding blood to colour
you watched in silence
watched the silence ( )
movement in the painter’s hand
air stained with pigment
portholes in his head
with a view to the Viennese Ocean
collapsed with broken bodies and
you drew words in your mouth
invoking poetry as an additional witness
soaked with rain
drinking wine
movement in the poet’s hand
air stained with pigment
you name the picture – Die Windsbraut
This poem appears in Nathan Shepherdson’s collection, Apples with Human Skin, published by UQP.
Subscribe to our RSS feed
Follow us on Twitter