The Best Australian Poems 2013 Read online

smiles.

  Idol dolls Idol dollars slip trimester

  Captor audition gentle massaged newly wedded

  Track smooches arrival ivory hype emotional

  Attention bar tab bravery

  Replica escort love’s blood laws lawless

  Stream afield flirt stay flirt goes.

  Rebel the bells licence amorously bravery.

  Inside Edward Hopper

  Brenda Saunders

  Room in New York, 1932

  We are in the front room upstairs. Just your usual rented brownstone. Apart from the piano. We only came to look at art and now we’re inside a painting, held by the dark frame of the window at night. He’s not talking to me. He’s posing, pretending to read, stretching the paper into black and white shapes. I tinkle a few notes. Waiting. Electric light can be so brittle. It sharpens the space between us. My red dress has become the focal point in the picture, flesh tones soft against mahogany. Some guy is watching from the apartment across the street. He thinks I haven’t noticed. I should pull the drapes, block out his angle of vision. But then we’d never get out.

  Nighthawks, 1942

  There’s no stopping him: he went off in the middle of the night. Said he was going out for cigarettes. I’m not in this picture. There’s no door, so I don’t know if I could get in. Or how he will get out! He’s sitting in there smoking, watching the couple at the counter, well the redhead anyway. The waiter is making small talk. Passing time. They are all shaped in a diner window. Separate, like extras in a movie. Artificial light freezes the frame, draining the colour. He’s always looking for the story beyond the painted surface. But this time he’s gone too far.

  Jivin’ With Bonny Cassidy etc.

  Jessica L. Wilkinson

  never the same

  night—never the same

  light in the feet

  dark devil in the heel

  the dress got wet—

  i cut it off—i lost

  control—rolled off the bed

  //

  the fault was all stylus—

  how it beat the rhythm out

  the groove—flicked

  the heel

  ‘cross the boards of the J.C. Hotel—

  shaking, grinding

  skip, kick & flack

  tr

  specifics track the mental map

  of a night well spent—

  … dot is the line that solves two points

  heel toheel

  play it loud, louder again

  the dress got wet—

  i cut it off

  i lost

  control—

  //

  the drink sunk in—

  i swigged the heat

  drew out the sweat

  slips down the arcing spine—

  shredded moments in a salt-licked

  time—

  viscous liquids all shook up

  in the dense light of a dusky pub—

  the buddy system—lava lamp

  that won’t dissolve

  louder, louder still

  the dress got wet—

  i cut it off

  i los t control—

  //

  mischief can’t control her hands—

  i stole the gin—

  four fingers

  down their throats—

  and one was mine

  and it was cut

  (signals to the floor—

  a point

  two

  bodies in a field—free-spinning dandelion drift

  matching feet

  bonny lass,

  bonny class

  bonny stylus groove

  || :

  the dress got wet—

  i cut it o ff

  i lo st cont

  rol

  : ||

  fell off the bed

  and bonny laughing out the window

  says “come on let’s go—

  Last Goodbyes in Havana

  Sarah Holland-Batt

  After Carver

  Midday cracks like a cool blue cup.

  We drink a last rum among the tanned couples

  and kiss pre-revolutionary glass to our lips,

  smooth and honest and scratchless.

  Beneath us, waves smash the Malecon

  with a force that could break our lives.

  Your eyes are hidden behind your sunglasses.

  Your hand shakes. Now and then you turn a page

  of The Dangerous Summer and sigh

  accusingly. We have cheated, certainly. Lied.

  Days we have fought float over us effortless

  as grease. Soon I will take a night flight to the Pacific

  and in Manhattan a woman is waiting

  who you have taught more than enough

  about patience and her possible life.

  You tap your knife against your plate

  and turn a page. Down the cliff, Cuban boys

  are diving off the stonewall into distance.

  Their young bodies gleam with promise.

  They kick down, then rise from the water like seals.

  Le Cimetière du Montparnasse

  Vivian Smith

  I was almost drifting up the avenue

  leading to the tomb of Baudelaire.

  Names were flowing back into my mind –

  my year in Paris 1959 –

  Sartre, Ionesco, Jouve and Ponge –

  when suddenly I saw a quiet group

  looking for some place they could not find.

  It proved to be the grave of Vallejo.

  Who were they, self-contained and whispering,

  students, fellow poets, refugees?

  I’m sure they must have been Peruvians,

  they knew his work, his worth, his world.

  They crossed themselves, and stood there, full of care.

  Leçons de Ténèbres

  Clive James

  But are they lessons, all these things I learn

  Through being so far gone in my decline?

  The wages of experience I earn

  Would service well a younger life than mine.

  I should have been more kind. It is my fate

  To find this out, but find it out too late.

  The mirror holds the ruins of my face

  Roughly together, thus reminding me

  I should have played it straight in every case,

  Not just when forced to. Far too casually

  I broke faith when it suited me, and here

  I am alone, and now the end is near.

  All of my life I put my labour first,

  I made my mark, but left no time between

  The things achieved, so, at my heedless worst,

  With no life, there was nothing I could mean.

  But now I have slowed down. I breathe the air

  As if there were not much more of it there

  And write these poems, which are funeral songs

  That have been taught to me by vanished time:

  Not only to enumerate my wrongs

  But to pay homage to the late sublime

  That comes with seeing how the years have brought

  A fitting end, if not the one I sought.

  Little Book of Mourning

  Kevin Hart

  i.m.JHH

  Winter

  Dark freeze in Charlottesville;

  The drinking water’s grown small teeth.

  Bare room: I
write till dusk

  In dusty radiator heat.

  Clocks graze on me all day;

  I hear the silence of two crows

  Then look down at my arm:

  Not even your shadow’s there to touch.

  Inside

  I only speak old words:

  They keep in with the dead,

  They leave their doors ajar.

  Some words are corridors

  That lead us to the dead

  And we can trust their dark;

  We pass a hammer, sure,

  We pass an anvil too

  We pass a stirrup last;

  And then we find the dead

  Curled up, inside, asleep,

  With our names on their tongues.

  On the Mantelpiece

  My father doesn’t know

  That he died years ago:

  He looks out for a while

  From 1965 or so

  And I look back, although

  It chills away my smile

  To see him with a glow

  At dinner, in the snow,

  In full-on sixties style

  Not knowing then the blow

  That was to knock him low,

  And scrapes me like a file.

  Parachuting

  They dropped you into France when young

  A town up north (I went there once);

  Your squad was braced behind a wall

  And you could see the man up front

  Go left and his big head go right

  And you threw up, you said, and ran

  Across the street when shouted there

  And fell down too, no time at all.

  You showed me medals only once

  And a weird wound just once as well,

  A mucky hole that sucked in flesh

  On each side of an upper thigh.

  Now you’ve gone down again at night:

  No river and no fields beneath.

  Downstairs

  I walk down there

  Because I must

  And feel each step

  Is less than just

  And blank a thought

  But can’t ignore

  A shadow’s sigh

  The furnace roar

  This is the place

  Where darkness grows

  This is the place

  My father goes

  Loans slip

  Jane Gibian

  Perfect phrases for the sales call :

  50 things you want to know about world issues and

  How to survive without a job : practical

  Working overseas : a working holiday guide /

  Why men earn more : the startling truth behind

  Leadership for dummies /

  What’s eating your child? : the hidden connections between food and

  Money and soul : the pyschology of money and the transformation of

  House rules /

  The alchemy of finance : reading the mind of

  Consulting for dummies /

  Lumière train

  Darby Hudson

  I’m sitting by the silvery train tracks, under the moon, in a leafy auditorium.

  Tons of steel and light approach from the wings of the stage

  and thunder through with warm flashes of amber luminescence:

  the train windows, shaped like animatic frames of old film-reel negative,

  flicker by at 18 frames a second.

  Just enough to bring the commuters back to life

  Marrickville

  Fiona Wright

  Later that night, I cut

  the plastic boning from the bodice of my dress:

  no need for structure, over summer.

  There were bruises

  on my knees I didn’t recognise.

  I saw us all that day, all day

  projected on a big screen:

  the bathtub underneath the orange tree,

  crushed grass imprinted on my shins,

  your cat-like eyeliner, the warm

  sangria out of mugs. My feet grew numb

  beneath my hips. Saturation.

  I still felt overseen

  when I walked home, alone and shouldered.

  A black light flicked behind a balcony,

  a woman, neon-lit,

  crushed out a cigarette

  and turned to kiss, to give

  a kiss. It takes

  three keys to open my front door.

  Mateship

  Chris Andrews

  Was it eupepsia? I wasn’t thinking:

  Why does everything have to be such a rush.

  Or the mottled weather? I wasn’t even

  wondering how indignant to be about what

  when the media and self-interest provide

  reasons to keep me indignant all the time.

  Walking to the station, I had a vague sense

  of what it might mean to feel real affection

  for the things — the patterns of energy-stuff —

  in the world, and, being one such or many

  myself, to adjust them here and there in right

  but unnecessary ways. The shadow-pools

  in the street seemed continuous with a night

  like a party spilling from a mansion split

  into flats along a canal, an open-

  ended night full of divergent adventures,

  novelty lamps, doors ajar, strange languages

  and splashes. Then a vaguely familiar guy

  with his elbows out came up to me and said

  “Usually I think, Life will sort you out, mate,

  but this time it looks like life has to be me.”

  Mediterranean Time

  Andrew Sant

  The swarthy plumber who sets a time

  to fix the taps never comes. Water

  drips in nearby limestone caves

  with less regularity from stalactites.

  Church bells clang, now in a frenzy,

  then once only and, much later, once again –

  shuttered solitude now in silent streets

  during the heat of the afternoon. In the shade,

  on dusty ground, thin cats yawn.

  Hibiscuses expose their sexy throats.

  Should the plumber come, after

  a siesta’s done, he’ll likely find

  no-one home. He may later phone.

  The sun shines hard on a limestone landscape

  from which, block by sawn block,

  the villages have risen as did – but how? –

  megaliths during the Neolithic.

  There’s no division of colour, honeyed,

  between what’s man-made and the land –

  the villages often atop the coralline-

  capped mesa-like formations.

  They look down on tiers of ancient cultivation.

  Olive lizards spurt in and out

  of the drystone walls – a species

  endemic to the island after the sea

  gushed into the Mediterranean basin

  with cataclysmic swiftness.

  The Romans called the landfall Gaulus.

  Its stratified cliffs are the Miocene

  made scenic. Marine fossils

  in a fanned museum line up

  under glass, put a contemporary shine

  on geologic time; another case displays ancient bones.

  Perhaps of a distant, distant forebear


  of the plumber who, in this farrago,

  shrugs off haste, short north of the cliffs.

  Meeting the Relatives

  Richard Kelly Tipping

  They’re on you before you know it,

  careering around the corner in that

  flashy ball of light – curious, energetic

  and eager to share the fun. You’re it.

  Is that really you lying by the television or

  slumped in the front seat, still alive?

  You reach for a phone to call your mother

  but she’s saying don’t worry darling,

  I’m here, peeling away from your astonished

  face another translucent mica flake.

  There are layers of faces within you now,

  each one vibrant with self-determined life,

  fascinated by your stories, waiting their

  turn to speak. You settle back painlessly

  knowing the news can’t be all bad, it’s past!

  These people you’re descended from, who seem to

  know you, are saying that they own you

  as you float on your back in champagne,

  their faces are thought bubbles, popping

  your elevated, delighting brain.

  A voice deep inside you, which could

  be your own, is saying Let’s Go …

  Meeting with the Same River

  Bai Helin (translated by Ouyang Yu)

  In the spring I met with the afternoon of the same river

  When I found that the sorrow inside its body

  And the hidden language of its gestures

  Were surprisingly similar to someone else’s tragedy

  Once I went so far as to open my mouth and speak the dead’s secrets

  In summer or even when it was colder

  I kept silent or when I walked alone on the bank

  The person who liked swimming at night

  Acted the way a bird did in the water

  On many occasions I go upstream along the river in search of a shoe

  Because no one understands how to talk with the river

  A lone snow crane on the water does not know whether to step forward or backwards

  Melbourne ode

  Matt Holden