Tuesday Poem - Leaving Home by Andy Kissane

Leaving Home

The oven door was permanently ajar,

hanging by its last hinge, when my mother

crossed the kitchen and planted a kiss

on my father’s bristly cheek, just below

his grey-flecked, neatly squared sideburn.

She didn’t say anything or look back

as the wire door slammed shut. Striding

calmly towards the oak tree, my mother

glanced at the clothes line spinning idly

in the breeze, smiled at the garden gnome

lounging by the pond, his fishing rod poised

above the lily pads. Free from the ache

of varicose veins, she climbed the tree.

“At last,” she said to herself, “I have managed

to get my priorities right” — and with that

the feathers sprouted from her scapula

and her dentures dropped, orphan-like,

from her lips. High now, dangerously high,

she stretched out her supple wings

until they were as flat as an ironing board.

Sensing the far-off salty air, she hesitated

for a moment, then leapt into the wind. She circled
the house once, gliding over the FOR SALE sign

in the front yard as if she might just perch

there, before rising up again. My mother

felt her heart beat with wonder at the way

the rolling air held her aloft. Her nomadic eyes

scanned the darkening north and she flew away.

http://andykissane.com/

Andy Kissane was born in Melbourne but now he lives in Sydney. This poem is from his latest book 'Out To Lunch' published by Puncher & Wattmann.  

Tuesday Poem - The Toppled Head by Les Murray

The Toppled Head

The big bald head is asleep
like Lenin on a pavement.
Tipping backwards, it starts
a great mouth-breathing snore
throttling as stormwater
loud as a hangar door
     running on rails
but his companion gently
reshapes his pillow, till his
position's once more foetal,
breathing towards his feet.
His timbre goes silent, and
the glottal dies in a gulp.


Something amusing from Les, just to keep the pot boiling.

Tuesday Poem - I Came Home With The Shopping by Jennifer Compton

I Came Home with the Shopping

And I said to him as he opened the front door -

Do you remember what day it is tomorrow?

And he said - No. What day is it?

Then I said - Do you remember who you married?

Yes - he said. Yes. I do remember her.

And then we both said – How many years is it?

Should we do something? - he said. No - I said.

Let's just do what we always do. I like doing that.

I feel quite stunned at the moment because while I was in New Zealand trying to do my Brilliant Book Tour for This City my mother dropped off the twig. Her timing was exquisite, as was her triumphant reconciliation with me in the corridor of Wellington Hospital. I never thought she would be able to find the right thing to say, but she did. So, I ended up going to her funeral in St Judes Lyall Bay the day before I was booked to fly back to Australia. St Judes was the church where Matt and I got married in 1971 on 31st July. So her timing wasn't quite consummate, because her funeral was on August 2nd. Anyway, I just went and forgot our wedding anniversary because I was in the thick of it, so tonight I am posting one of the few poems I have written for my precious husband Matthew. 

Tuesday Poem - Musical Buildings by Jennifer Compton

Musical Buildings

You have been playing musical buildings while I

have been away, visiting the world. And you have

been laying landmines, subtle, fragrant explosions

hoisting me, as I walk your streets, into an original

thought - it is a cunning city. Not what it was, yet

nothing is forgotten. As a tree dies, another grows.

My library in Lyall Bay is given over to private use

but the magic door up to the free books is still there.   

The Bank of New Zealand, opposite James Smiths,

is now a Burger King. James Smiths has absconded.

Wellington Central Library is the City Gallery, ok?

It's the Botanic Garden, not the Botanical Gardens.

It never has been the Botanical Gardens. That's just

what the locals like to call it in their whimsical way.

The National Art Gallery and Dominion Museum

are part of the Massey campus, I would swear they

had kept the linoleum if it wasn't so patently new.

It squeaks underfoot with an eerie Proustian effect.

Wellington District Ambulance is now a wine bar.

The Public Trust houses Creative New Zealand.

Athletic Park has gone. So have the dangerous

playgrounds with their battering rams with which

we tried to kill each other and, mostly, didn't succeed.

There was always one kid who would throw up though

if you kept on pushing higher while he screamed - Stop! 

And there is the building still decked out as E. Morris Jnr

where I viewed my father's bedizened body in his coffin

which now trades in coffee and cake as Strawberry Fare.

I wouldn't normally post one of my own poems but I am just about to fly home to Wellington for the launch of my book – This City – which won the Kathleen Grattan Award judged by Vincent O'Sullivan, and is being published by Otago University Press, which is a very welcome part of the prize. So here is a poem about Wellington, the city where I was born. When I returned, after so many years away, to spend six months in residence at Randell Cottage, I found that we had not forgotten one another. 

This City is being launched by Mary McCallum at the Thistle Inn on Monday July 18^th at 6pm  - and in Palmerston North by Johanna Aitchison at the Bruce McKenzie Bookshop on Tuesday July 19^th at 6pm.
All welcome.  

Tuesday Poem - Strangers by Laurice Gilbert

Strangers

Inge said

I have no family

Aah! we said,

how wonderful

No, she said

think about it

If I never send another Christmas card

no-one will complain

and I have no obligation ever

to write another letter

Sounds delicious we said

how can we achieve this?

No, think about it she said

I travel the world alone

Yes? we said

so far so good

And no-one to inform if my plane should crash

or I should get lost at sea

or I should have a heart attack

in a cheap hotel of my own choosing

Sounds liberating we said

how free you are

No, she said

I noticed this acerbic, and charming, poem when it was published in Bravado after being awarded

second prize in their competition. It's like a paper cut, you feel a little sting and then suddenly you

are gushing blood. It's a little bit of perfect. I love the judicious use of punctuation, especially the

final lack of it. It makes the poem zoom out.

Laurice Gilbert lives in Wellington and is the President of the NZ Poetry Society.

Tuesday Poem - Apologising to Unicorns by Peter Boyle

                          Apologising to Unicorns

Apologising to unicorns is problematic. They rarely understand our purposes. Tenderness will often be seen as the manipulative gestures of a fear that seeks death – for itself and others. Unicorns sleep most comfortably in heavy traffic where the hum of self-absorbed commuters leaves them invisible. To find a unicorn in a forest is like falling asleep in English and waking up fluent in Pashtun. Someone may well have done it. Unicorns sense above all our uncertainty of ourselves, our not belonging, our poor talent for letting the miraculous be. Stripped back to primal desecration, our hearts still yearn for unicorns. We trail our mirrors in the waters of sky-stretched ponds. Although they will never look to us for food or shelter unicorns are reluctant to abandon their legend of our existence. Our one virginity is that we are not yet born.

Peter Boyle's latest book - Apocrypha - published by Vagabond Press, won two of the big prizes in 2010 here in Australia.

http://www.vagabondpress.net/Vagabond_Press/New_%26_Forthcoming/Entries/2010/12/4_Congratulations_to_Peter_Boyle.html

I noticed his work when his first book – Coming Home From The World – published by Five Islands Press in 1994, won the NSW Premier's Prize in 1995. So he has been at it for a while, writing wonderful poetry and scooping up the prizes. More power to his elbow.

Tuesday Poem - Metamorphosis by Susan Fealy

       Metamorphosis

         for Franz Kafka, 1883-1924

Cathedral-bird cawdaw jackerdaw,*

a dark plumaged passerine bird.

A jackdaw is kavka in Czech.

The genus of crows and ravens,

it calls in a metallic chyak chyak.

Cathedral-bird cawdaw jackerdaw.

Jackdaws are harbingers of rain,

their under-wings are wire grey,

and kavka means jackdaw in Czech.

His sisters Elli, Valli and Ottla

died in forty-one, two and three.

Cathedral-bird cawdaw jackerdaw.

Greeks tell that a jackdaw falls

seeking his kin in a dish of oil.

A jackdaw is kavka in Czech.

His beak and throat are clattering:

he calls in a metallic chyak chyak.

Cathedral-bird cawdaw jackerdaw.

A jackdaw is kavka in Czech.

*some obsolete names for jackdaw

I heard Susan read this poem at a gathering at Collected Works Bookshop here in  Melbourne and was very taken with it. But I seem to always be very taken with her work. She seems to be able to make the crystal ring with no sense of strain, her words hover and fly. It's almost alchemical. It is a kind of magic.