Eugene
my brother is
in the bathtub.
he is playing with
his heart's plumbing.
he puts the plunger
onto his chest
and pushes down,
the plunger sucking
itself upward,
releasing the clog
of clotted emotions.
when he gets out
there's a red, rashy
circle in the middle
of his ribcage;
all the body's pipes
pulled too close to
the surface.
his lips stretch up into
a sanguine smile,
unconcealed, open-hearted.
The Little Heart
Cut away your pale skin with a pen.
Old silk or lace, folded carefully
In a wide box, with tissue.
False heart,
Bare in its cage of little ribs.
Wet in your cold hand, roll it in ink and watch
The way it rubberstamps itself across the page.
The little heart is tired now
Smudged black, small in your hand.
Warm red fish.
Slot it back in place
Like the jigsaw piece of you it is.
Safely inside your warm self
The little heart throbs quiet.
Your veins run black with ink.
Family bonding at 4am
My grandmother woke up at crazed 4am
looking for her moneybelt
waking the entire family.
And because she sleeps in the lounge,
and because she resents it,
her fury was more pronounced,
slamming the hallway door so hard that
I found a dent in the wall the next day.
Stomping her feet, angrily loud,
my grandmother searched for her 50 grand
up, and down the hallway. The bathroom. The toilet.
The laundry.
The kitchen. Cupboards.
Scrutinising every single tiny grain of space
for a bright red bulging belt she thinks I know nothing about.
Knock, knock, on my mother's door.
"I've lost the bloody thing."
A long time later, my mother got up,
(she would get hell for that slow response later)
and mother, and daughter,
navigated through the labyrinth of 25 walls in our house.
"It was under her bed."
I could hear my dad's laughter from next door.
He shouldn't have done that
now there are two things for the grandmother to cry over.
With the moneybelt tucked safely under her pillow,
my grandmother went back to bed,
while the entire family thought about the money and 4am.
Le Ode to Teenage Angst
Thomas is a Goth.
He dyed the hair
that he wears long,
black
like his clothes and shoes and
lipstick.
On the pages of his journal
are his latest poems.
"Blood
Darkness
Despair
Why? "
Thomas stops to think.
He wishes he was a vampire.
Then everyone would be scared of him
or think he was cool
and invite him to their parties.
"Honey! Dinnertime!"
Thomas puts his pen down
and bounds down the stairs
two by two,
to Simpsons,
and his dinner of steak and potatoes.
Monbretia
Late-summer-green leaves
Trail lazy fingers through tired brown water.
My schoolgirl shoes and white ankle socks
Plod steadily along with my down-to-earth kilt.
The toi toi and flax rise high above my head
With its neat blonde plait.
Suddenly my eye is caught by the bright monbretia;
Daring orange amongst the placid green.
Drab thoughts of homework and Hamlet
Fleet as effortlessly from my mind as
Murky water flows under the bridge beside me.
With that one sight
T houghts of you
B ombard all my senses.
"Mombritches?!" you said hesitantly, jokingly,
As you tried to remember
The name I had taught you.
I didn't care, soaked through and covered in river mud
I laughed.
I instructed you to look at the sunset
And you told me about cricket
As our arms moved in sync while we paddled home.
Gardening for the 21st Century Woman
Prune.
This is the only way
you will get anywhere
girls.
Be ruthless.
Who needs frivolous flowers
and leaves
and fruit.
All that nonsense
will be of no use
to you.
You must start
with some sharp secateurs.
Cut first
the flower
then the stalk
and the woody root
until you are left
with a neat
manageable
skeleton.
Next week girls–topiaries.
Cards
I
We are playing cards.
I hold myself back,
feeling for the right moment
to end the game.
I grip my set in a fan by my heart
so you can't see,
though you never cheat.
II
I remember that bright-grey day
in the park.
I thought the sky
was on the brink of something.
A storm, perhaps,
or a heavenly announcement.
Unfolding my austere umbrella,
I scooped up a brown bundle
of leaves&srquo;
carefully, because you never know
what might be underneath.
Clutching them,
I watched you toss your own
bright curling leaves
into the wind
and you danced around
as they fell and stuck in your hair.
Reprise
yesterday (fine)
do you remember summer days
blazing sforzandos when you pushed me higher
always & told me you liked glissandos
i turned from the sky and watched you
waving on the ground happily
& winter lead you by the hand away
you were lost in the morning fog
but you called it love &
drew hearts on opaque glass
they bled but you laughed
later you cried i heard your tears staccato
fall your cheek pressed against
the window pane matching raindrops
outside you sospirando in the dark
the piano in e minor for
forty days and forty nights
beneath floorboards in your room
a gold laced book
on sun-stained pages in cobweb ink
a requiem unnamed
now the birds sing a capellas but
you are deaf & twice disgraced
on the window
not rain nor frost but
bleeding hearts rhapsodies &
fingerprints
on white piano keys thin black islands
& dust middle c untouched
(Da Capo al fine)
Had I an intelligent dolphin…
I like the idea
of riding a dolphin
down the Hutt River
perhaps because of its sheer absurdity
dolphins being mostly salt water dwellers
and the Hutt River being rather too shallow
for such an escapade.
Perhaps, because I relish the thought
of speeding past Gladys,
purposefully trundling the bus towards
school and assembly and complex conjugates.
Leaving Silverstream, there would
be the problem of the weir.
However, had I an intelligent dolphin,
we could jump it
in the kind of perfect arc
formed by a rainbow
or a perfectly lobbed paper dart.
Sleekly, in slow-motion
we would rise,
splattering the sky with
cascades and Catherine Wheels
of muddy water.
And people would stop
their cars and stare
as my dolphin and I
splashed and skittered joyfully
out to the harbour.
The Hearts on the Vines
The hearts on the vines smile, the white hearts
bloodless as albino babies.
They pump nothing.
A man
(silent opening of spiracles,
membrane primed to snap)
finds a deep and heady music
between layers of lipid.
A man
is masticated.
And the white hearts smile:
truncated sadness. They know
where the path leads, trees leaning in anticipation
and proteinaceous like silk.
They bare flaxen teeth.
A woman's fingers
(swelling like amoebae under milk sheen,
skin of a tough and wizened greed)
encircle a molten core.
She listens rapturous; it beats for her alone.
A woman
is consumed.
The hearts on the vines smile.
They are cold.
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