Poetry Archives | Page 6 of 8 | Giramondo Publishing

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Poetry

How difficult it might be to abandoned and alone, at Easter, at Roma Trastevere Station, watching trains arriving and leaving without you to all sorts of exciting destinations; knowing everyone else was on their way up to the mountains, or off to the seaside; to visit with friends and family; to partake of festive wine and cured olives and fattened, delicately spiced, young lamb.

when I did bleed, some months later, I found that same / humiliation, the conversation I’d rehearsed, how to tell / my mother I was somehow now more grown, a mush / of words I could not say: instead I tried to hide it: and

While travelling in the mountain realm I discover in clear weather how unbusy the Earth / can be mountain after mountain as far as the eye can reach. / Lonely, I make myself noticed by touching with my left elbow and right big toe / the beginning and ending of a hundred-metre-long white thread.

i’m not scared of anything / the door’s just nicer shut / and so are the windows / and the drains, taped over / but the vent’s wide open / because i cannot reach it, / so i watch it like TV and / huntsman comes right in.

Mt Gulaga becoming visible, something / ending, something beginning, the first / smoke of nightfall / thin over the canopy, / deep of it / rising steadily through the trees.

the goldfish pepsi / bumps into / her double in the / mirror glass of the tank / would she try to eat herself / for breakfast we could / play her the tape of dorian / gray

When I was young, I realised my body / was something to be held back or kept / in its place, so I have mastered the art / of observation, how to watch faces for / a frown or grimace: signs of weather.

Avoid doughnuts. Doughnuts sprinkle your lap with sugar. / Avoid, for the first day of travel, all right turns. Travel light. / Wear one of the five new sweaters you bought for the trip.

We’ve turned it into emotion – / red pickle like the night’s heat, ice creams so / smooth they enforce silence, orange- / flavoured kisses, conversations directed by rum.

Anemograms from years you can hardly remember / handed round at an evening garden party. / Empty envelopes the colour of envy, / sparkling wine and cautious laughter.

The Leech / You’re a sycophant, repugnant. Vile bacchant— / you suck and glut, fill like a slimy phial. No denial / of the claret in our veins. Fat phlebotomist, / yes, you were used to treat ailments—fevers, gout, / haemorrhoids, headaches, clots, bleeding wounds / and gums—you thrived, made doctors rich.

8) he followed me on Instagram, I followed him back / just to be kind, and he introduced himself as a physicist / building a time machine and asked if I / was interested to go back to the precolonial Tapanuli / because he had the white man’s guilt, / the Dutch person’s guilt, the coloniser’s guilt, / but also the urge / to verify if my ancestors were really man-eaters, / ‘Aren’t you at least a bit, teeny, tiny, curious?’ / he replied, ending it with a chicken leg emoji

I worked them, sharpened hooks / for high-rollers, sewing my special rigs. / Bridles for bonito, live bait that / trailed the barbed viridian in our wake.

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.

Cat’s Pantoum / Cat in curve, perched on the side table / She said, holding out her hand / House cat leans forward, leaps: / A dislocation finds its moment

The literary world prefers its daytime rose, / sweet and thorny, seasonal, blown. / You open only at night, on the ledge, / stepping from your continent’s shelf / like Houdini on a tightrope, flesh tensed, / gazing in all directions at once / like Titian’s triple portrait beasts, / or your own words, pointing and warning.

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