First published in Poles Apart Poetry Anthology (apologies, no website available) in 2008.
Dolphin Feed
There is no poetry here
not in the sunset greying
beyond the wharf –
a forgotten postcard
fading
in the footy-match intensity
of the floodlights.
Not in the whaling-history
of the bay
dampening, its colours bleeding.
Not in the brochure-perfect waves
crumpling under many feet.
Not in the ticket
nibbling queues
not in the crowing translators
on the beach or the
squabbling, flapping flocks
bumping beaks
at the back of the line.
Not in the keeper
clucking
to steady the wild animal
and the animals.
Not in the dolphin's eye
following the fish, never
the feeder.
Not in the patch of skin
pecked clean
of protective oils
by many hands.
The only glistening salt-drops here
are tantrum tears
and they don't pause mid-air
to turn
and smile
and dive.
There is no poetry here.
© Laura Smith 2008
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Archive: Soulmates
First published in 4W19 in 2008. This poem also became part of the curriculum for creative writing students at Charles Sturt University in 2008. Republished in Stillcraic in 2011.
Soulmates
I bought silverbeet
and refused a bag
and as I stepped away from the checkout
it occurred to me
that I was holding it
like a bunch of flowers. But casually,
as those who are often given flowers do.
And for a moment
I walked with a jaunty step,
as those who are often given flowers do.
And I realised
I had chosen it with care,
as do those
who sometimes buy flowers,
pushing some aside to find the best,
freshest,
unbruised bouquet,
the coldest one,
the one with the deepest green,
the deepest folds,
the juiciest scattering of spray-on dew.
And as I sauntered
through the autodoors
into the night
a man
stepped into my pathway
and I thought
he is going to ask for money
but instead he said
"Are those for me?"
and I couldn't help but smile,
because he thought the way I did,
and for a moment I wanted,
more than anything,
to loosen a stem
and give it to him,
like some Shakespearean hero
would give a single rose,
like people who never give flowers
do.
But even though he'd made me smile, and
because I'd expected him to ask for money, and
because the words were already on my tongue
and the movements in my legs, I said
"No, sorry."
and
skirted him,
and
walked away.
© Laura Smith 2008
Soulmates
I bought silverbeet
and refused a bag
and as I stepped away from the checkout
it occurred to me
that I was holding it
like a bunch of flowers. But casually,
as those who are often given flowers do.
And for a moment
I walked with a jaunty step,
as those who are often given flowers do.
And I realised
I had chosen it with care,
as do those
who sometimes buy flowers,
pushing some aside to find the best,
freshest,
unbruised bouquet,
the coldest one,
the one with the deepest green,
the deepest folds,
the juiciest scattering of spray-on dew.
And as I sauntered
through the autodoors
into the night
a man
stepped into my pathway
and I thought
he is going to ask for money
but instead he said
"Are those for me?"
and I couldn't help but smile,
because he thought the way I did,
and for a moment I wanted,
more than anything,
to loosen a stem
and give it to him,
like some Shakespearean hero
would give a single rose,
like people who never give flowers
do.
But even though he'd made me smile, and
because I'd expected him to ask for money, and
because the words were already on my tongue
and the movements in my legs, I said
"No, sorry."
and
skirted him,
and
walked away.
© Laura Smith 2008
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Poetry Idol Final 2010 photos
So Poetry Idol's been and gone. I read Sharon, which is from a series I've been writing about old housemates. I managed to get through the entire poem without freaking out, which, really, felt like a win.
Poetry Idol Final 2010 photos
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Archive: Waiting for Afternoon Tea
First published by TIDE in 2004.
Waiting for Afternoon Tea
Sandra had heard the shot from outside, so she was prepared for a bit of a sight when she went in. What she wasn't prepared for was stumbling in on the cleaning process - the efficient gestures, the smell of cleaning fluids, their pale bustling movements through the room, the patch of white foam on the head of the old florid armchair. There was a hole in the panelling behind, and a drying unformed web of mince beetling its way down the wall.
She wasn't prepared for the way his stippled thumb folded in on itself when one of them took his hand to move him, or the non-reaction of his eyelids, and their eyes, when they went to move him and a finger slipped, into an eye-ball that would liquefy (or. . . congeal?) soon enough. It was like a shock to the system, like being struck unexpectedly. Someone was trying to save her the vision of his truth. His unclean magenta.
She had expected them to do it and leave, but really they should have had more time. She had, after all, promised to stay out for the full working day, and only came home with the vague, diminished feeling that perhaps she could do something to stop it, though the finances were settled and over.
She had paused to check the door was closed and kept the key on her when she went inside. She didn't like the way it seemed to grow onto the walls it was supposed to crack open, adding a little metal to the line under the hook each time it swung. She had started to acquire his slur in the end.
Now she put down her shopping bags (one of everything, not two), in the usual place that she put them, under the hallway table, and was glad that they hadn't done it in the kitchen. She had always gone in to greet him before putting the groceries way. No matter how close the Wildberry Sorbet was to turning to mush. One must always check. Becoming suddenly unexpectedly alone was best not delayed until after the tomatoes were in the fridge. Not if it meant that it might be dropped in your initial shock, on the way to the kitchen, might roll red into hidden corners.
So she had always kissed him with free hands; he liked her moment of being glad to see him, and they hadn't minded re-frozen desserts. There was one patch worn under the little mahogany table, the rest fairly new and untrodden.
This time, she walked into the lounge-room, brisk as usual, and, as usual, following the door-framed vision. She hadn't forgotten that it was happening, but all those other times, going past the two doors of the bedrooms, dining-room on the right, all those other brisk trots down the carpet had dealt with death as much as this one. Until you were in the room you never knew.
This time, when she got there, she wasn't sure what to do. Realising that her ritual was broken, that she wouldn't kiss that cadaver, touch the corpse, she stood unacknowledged and unchallenged, in a room silent with trite respect, or numb efficiency, and watched as one added foam to the trail left by the motion of rolling him onto the stretcher.
Next door switched on a radio, and more foam was added to an old stain (they clearly loved their job, as he had), as the stretcher was folded to fit into one of the two industrial vacuum cleaners in the room.
They had said that they would dispose of it properly, but she liked to think that they wanted the corpse for soap. He would have liked it that way. Towards the end the humiliation of dried shit on his cheeks (turn the other one) had been too much for him. He had spent most of his time in the specially-fitted shower, a pink shape through the glass, while she read in the steaming room. Her crisp books slackening with the damp, until he called. To end transubstantiated, transformed, into something clean, something that would leave other things clean, rather than smearing them with another bodily fluid, that would have made him happy. She suspected that that was why he had chosen them, rather than another organisation. But they had reassured her that things would be done "properly", and now, when their job was almost done, they asked no questions, and neither did she.
Rising to her toes to avoid all the little islets, and the one who was dabbing at the carpet, slowly wiping the stuff away, she went and counted the lipsticks in the bathroom. She arranged them into different rows. Oldest to newest. Most to least. Lightest to deepest. She hadn't worn them for some time because they made him nervous. Lipstick meant sex, which meant that she was leaving him, that she regretted the new creases between her eyebrows, and the time-drift of the moles on the back of her hand. In the end he decided to go before she could. The vacuum started up and she realised that she had been listening to the muffled sounds of music through the wall.
There was the usual smell now, from the final sagging of his muscles. The concluding huzzah. She wondered whether he enjoyed having control over the moment. For once. At last. Whether he felt reckless at that moment, or terrified. She would bet on terrified, but one could never tell.
She turned on the shower and opened the medicine cabinet.
There was an old copy of Women's Weekly on the shelf, so she took it down and resented the closed doors of the last few days, and the closed expression of his last few weeks. Sandra tried to imagine what the Reader to Reader Panel would say, so that by the time they were loading one of the vacuum cleaners into the van she wasn't sure whether it was his vacuum or not. Perhaps they wouldn't use him to clean up his own remnants. He would have enjoyed the irony of it, among other things, but they seemed too cold to notice. She wondered whether they would move on into the hall and the bedrooms, or just do the lounge. That part of the contract hadn't been explained. Not to her.
When she realised that her fingernail was digging into the whites of Kurt Cobain's eyes she put it down and went outside, to check the mail, half of it now defunct, and paused a moment beside their van ("MarC's Carpet Cleaning, Special Services Inclusive"), to look at her house, before moving to take the shopping from the hall, and put the tomatoes away.
© Laura Smith 2004
Waiting for Afternoon Tea
Sandra had heard the shot from outside, so she was prepared for a bit of a sight when she went in. What she wasn't prepared for was stumbling in on the cleaning process - the efficient gestures, the smell of cleaning fluids, their pale bustling movements through the room, the patch of white foam on the head of the old florid armchair. There was a hole in the panelling behind, and a drying unformed web of mince beetling its way down the wall.
She wasn't prepared for the way his stippled thumb folded in on itself when one of them took his hand to move him, or the non-reaction of his eyelids, and their eyes, when they went to move him and a finger slipped, into an eye-ball that would liquefy (or. . . congeal?) soon enough. It was like a shock to the system, like being struck unexpectedly. Someone was trying to save her the vision of his truth. His unclean magenta.
She had expected them to do it and leave, but really they should have had more time. She had, after all, promised to stay out for the full working day, and only came home with the vague, diminished feeling that perhaps she could do something to stop it, though the finances were settled and over.
She had paused to check the door was closed and kept the key on her when she went inside. She didn't like the way it seemed to grow onto the walls it was supposed to crack open, adding a little metal to the line under the hook each time it swung. She had started to acquire his slur in the end.
Now she put down her shopping bags (one of everything, not two), in the usual place that she put them, under the hallway table, and was glad that they hadn't done it in the kitchen. She had always gone in to greet him before putting the groceries way. No matter how close the Wildberry Sorbet was to turning to mush. One must always check. Becoming suddenly unexpectedly alone was best not delayed until after the tomatoes were in the fridge. Not if it meant that it might be dropped in your initial shock, on the way to the kitchen, might roll red into hidden corners.
So she had always kissed him with free hands; he liked her moment of being glad to see him, and they hadn't minded re-frozen desserts. There was one patch worn under the little mahogany table, the rest fairly new and untrodden.
This time, she walked into the lounge-room, brisk as usual, and, as usual, following the door-framed vision. She hadn't forgotten that it was happening, but all those other times, going past the two doors of the bedrooms, dining-room on the right, all those other brisk trots down the carpet had dealt with death as much as this one. Until you were in the room you never knew.
This time, when she got there, she wasn't sure what to do. Realising that her ritual was broken, that she wouldn't kiss that cadaver, touch the corpse, she stood unacknowledged and unchallenged, in a room silent with trite respect, or numb efficiency, and watched as one added foam to the trail left by the motion of rolling him onto the stretcher.
Next door switched on a radio, and more foam was added to an old stain (they clearly loved their job, as he had), as the stretcher was folded to fit into one of the two industrial vacuum cleaners in the room.
They had said that they would dispose of it properly, but she liked to think that they wanted the corpse for soap. He would have liked it that way. Towards the end the humiliation of dried shit on his cheeks (turn the other one) had been too much for him. He had spent most of his time in the specially-fitted shower, a pink shape through the glass, while she read in the steaming room. Her crisp books slackening with the damp, until he called. To end transubstantiated, transformed, into something clean, something that would leave other things clean, rather than smearing them with another bodily fluid, that would have made him happy. She suspected that that was why he had chosen them, rather than another organisation. But they had reassured her that things would be done "properly", and now, when their job was almost done, they asked no questions, and neither did she.
Rising to her toes to avoid all the little islets, and the one who was dabbing at the carpet, slowly wiping the stuff away, she went and counted the lipsticks in the bathroom. She arranged them into different rows. Oldest to newest. Most to least. Lightest to deepest. She hadn't worn them for some time because they made him nervous. Lipstick meant sex, which meant that she was leaving him, that she regretted the new creases between her eyebrows, and the time-drift of the moles on the back of her hand. In the end he decided to go before she could. The vacuum started up and she realised that she had been listening to the muffled sounds of music through the wall.
There was the usual smell now, from the final sagging of his muscles. The concluding huzzah. She wondered whether he enjoyed having control over the moment. For once. At last. Whether he felt reckless at that moment, or terrified. She would bet on terrified, but one could never tell.
She turned on the shower and opened the medicine cabinet.
There was an old copy of Women's Weekly on the shelf, so she took it down and resented the closed doors of the last few days, and the closed expression of his last few weeks. Sandra tried to imagine what the Reader to Reader Panel would say, so that by the time they were loading one of the vacuum cleaners into the van she wasn't sure whether it was his vacuum or not. Perhaps they wouldn't use him to clean up his own remnants. He would have enjoyed the irony of it, among other things, but they seemed too cold to notice. She wondered whether they would move on into the hall and the bedrooms, or just do the lounge. That part of the contract hadn't been explained. Not to her.
When she realised that her fingernail was digging into the whites of Kurt Cobain's eyes she put it down and went outside, to check the mail, half of it now defunct, and paused a moment beside their van ("MarC's Carpet Cleaning, Special Services Inclusive"), to look at her house, before moving to take the shopping from the hall, and put the tomatoes away.
© Laura Smith 2004
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Archive: The Wilderness (and) Society
First published in Voiceworks (Animal Instinct) in 2004. Also published on the Voiceworks website in 2004.
The Wilderness (and) Society
When Danny stepped outside that day his expectations were low. He knew he was unlikely to make his money's worth. There was a certain scruffiness about the suit that frightened international students, and made small children nervous instead of shy - besides which it smelt, and he only had one koala foot.
Sitting on the bus on the way into town, a woman noticed the tin bucket as she made her way up the aisle. It didn't take long for a man with a grey nose to start asking him questions about sleeping in trees, and for the bus to fill with faces turned in his direction, so Danny put his head on and got off two stops early. He walked up the hill and down Keira Street, struggling against his asthma and the stench of the suit, and sat down in the mall to catch his breath.
"I can only give you some small change," said a little old lady, gaily seating herself next to Danny. She shuffled through her bags, and he tried to stifle his wheezing long enough to nod at her. "My friend Mabel told me that she saw you on the bus. I've never done this before, so I thought I should today. It's ok, isn't it? It's all I've got, you see."
She let Danny nod again and push the bucket towards her with his foot, and seemed to fizz with excitement as some silver jingled in the bottom.
A child paused to hide behind her father's legs, and the little old lady beamed at the man, and drawing him nearer.
"Aren't you hot in that suit?" He asked, and Danny nodded. His ears flapped, probably morosely, and he had trouble gripping the zipper as he tried to breath in. The child quivered and whispered at her father, who gave her some change to put in the bucket, which the woman held out helpfully when the child still held back.
"What's he doing?" He asked.
"I think it's a pantomime. He's acting out the death of the species. The imminent destruction of life."
Danny tried to shake his head, but he could feel his ears flopping forward into a nod.
"He's quite good."
Danny struggled.
"Isn't he."
A group of highschoolers stopped to watch. The child began to weep softly, and the father, a man of the arts, deciding that this was the opportunity to encourage his daughter's latent dramatic streak, clutched Danny's paw and folded to his knees. His hand clawed the dirt of the palm garden behind the bench, and his elbow dug into Danny's ribs.
Danny wheezed and kicked the bucket, the tin rang like a death toll, and curiosity deepened the crowd at the sound of the applause. Another child began crying, in large, rasping sobs, and someone in the crowd followed the tune.
The mall security guard arrived to inform Danny that he did not have a busking permit, but was waylaid by a large, rolling woman in a blur of floral print, who had just set the bucket upright and shoved in a fifty dollar note. The guard was unable to reach him before she turned to thrust the seeping bulk of her face into his shirt. Finding himself overwhelmed by the sincerity of her emotion, he lost his inhibitions and, kissing her, took the first step to the most passionate long term relationship of his life.
Danny gasped as a man danced, and wailed, and tore the lapel from his work shirt. A passing local radio station, tired of giving Red Bull to unsuspecting caffeine addicts, set up their microphones and promised the first interview of the performer. They made their way through the emotional masses, who were now driving a wall of sniffling children before them down Globe Lane and spilling out beyond the mall into Burelli Street, the microphones catching morsels of the most significant event of the lives of the people that they passed.
The mall sound system which they had, on a hunch, rigged to broadcast their station, amplified the sound until it seemed that the entire world was filled with the sound of lamentation and ecstasy. People in Nowra and Wagga Wagga turned off their television sets and wondered at the noise, almost on the edge of their hearing, that seemed to epitomise all the joy and sorrow that they had felt throughout their lives. Telstra was forced to boost their electrical supply, as an enormous number of people began calling their parents, and for three months afterwards the garbos were astonished to find that their trucks were almost empty, as people had discovered that it was possible to reduce, reuse, and recycle.
John Howard, reading a sheet of statistics for Telstra finances, suddenly realised that there was more to life than cricket and world domination, and developed an addiction for jelly beans. A large regular consumption of sugar and Red 109 ultimately altered the chemical make up of his brain and forced him to start making rational decisions. The world became a better place for old growth forests, when John Howard joined the Greens party.
Danny hung his head, exhausted, and felt his breathing finally coming and going in normal gulps. The little old lady, caught up in the grace of the moment, removed her coat, and theatrically laid it on the bench, arranging Danny's arms onto his chest, and kissing him on the forehead. Danny took the opportunity to slip his hands out of his paws and undo the zipper. The people around were all preoccupied with their own private mourning, and the little old lady was busy condoning a couple of people with a lot of electrical equipment who kept staring at their feet, for interrupting a great performer at his work. So no one noticed his movement. The father, who had rolled under the bench in the rigours of his demonstration, emerged to join in the defence.
By the time they had allowed the radio people past, there was nothing left to nod at them but a tin bucket smothered in a mass of notes and coins, and an empty koala suit that was missing one foot.
© Laura Smith 2004
The Wilderness (and) Society
When Danny stepped outside that day his expectations were low. He knew he was unlikely to make his money's worth. There was a certain scruffiness about the suit that frightened international students, and made small children nervous instead of shy - besides which it smelt, and he only had one koala foot.
Sitting on the bus on the way into town, a woman noticed the tin bucket as she made her way up the aisle. It didn't take long for a man with a grey nose to start asking him questions about sleeping in trees, and for the bus to fill with faces turned in his direction, so Danny put his head on and got off two stops early. He walked up the hill and down Keira Street, struggling against his asthma and the stench of the suit, and sat down in the mall to catch his breath.
"I can only give you some small change," said a little old lady, gaily seating herself next to Danny. She shuffled through her bags, and he tried to stifle his wheezing long enough to nod at her. "My friend Mabel told me that she saw you on the bus. I've never done this before, so I thought I should today. It's ok, isn't it? It's all I've got, you see."
She let Danny nod again and push the bucket towards her with his foot, and seemed to fizz with excitement as some silver jingled in the bottom.
A child paused to hide behind her father's legs, and the little old lady beamed at the man, and drawing him nearer.
"Aren't you hot in that suit?" He asked, and Danny nodded. His ears flapped, probably morosely, and he had trouble gripping the zipper as he tried to breath in. The child quivered and whispered at her father, who gave her some change to put in the bucket, which the woman held out helpfully when the child still held back.
"What's he doing?" He asked.
"I think it's a pantomime. He's acting out the death of the species. The imminent destruction of life."
Danny tried to shake his head, but he could feel his ears flopping forward into a nod.
"He's quite good."
Danny struggled.
"Isn't he."
A group of highschoolers stopped to watch. The child began to weep softly, and the father, a man of the arts, deciding that this was the opportunity to encourage his daughter's latent dramatic streak, clutched Danny's paw and folded to his knees. His hand clawed the dirt of the palm garden behind the bench, and his elbow dug into Danny's ribs.
Danny wheezed and kicked the bucket, the tin rang like a death toll, and curiosity deepened the crowd at the sound of the applause. Another child began crying, in large, rasping sobs, and someone in the crowd followed the tune.
The mall security guard arrived to inform Danny that he did not have a busking permit, but was waylaid by a large, rolling woman in a blur of floral print, who had just set the bucket upright and shoved in a fifty dollar note. The guard was unable to reach him before she turned to thrust the seeping bulk of her face into his shirt. Finding himself overwhelmed by the sincerity of her emotion, he lost his inhibitions and, kissing her, took the first step to the most passionate long term relationship of his life.
Danny gasped as a man danced, and wailed, and tore the lapel from his work shirt. A passing local radio station, tired of giving Red Bull to unsuspecting caffeine addicts, set up their microphones and promised the first interview of the performer. They made their way through the emotional masses, who were now driving a wall of sniffling children before them down Globe Lane and spilling out beyond the mall into Burelli Street, the microphones catching morsels of the most significant event of the lives of the people that they passed.
The mall sound system which they had, on a hunch, rigged to broadcast their station, amplified the sound until it seemed that the entire world was filled with the sound of lamentation and ecstasy. People in Nowra and Wagga Wagga turned off their television sets and wondered at the noise, almost on the edge of their hearing, that seemed to epitomise all the joy and sorrow that they had felt throughout their lives. Telstra was forced to boost their electrical supply, as an enormous number of people began calling their parents, and for three months afterwards the garbos were astonished to find that their trucks were almost empty, as people had discovered that it was possible to reduce, reuse, and recycle.
John Howard, reading a sheet of statistics for Telstra finances, suddenly realised that there was more to life than cricket and world domination, and developed an addiction for jelly beans. A large regular consumption of sugar and Red 109 ultimately altered the chemical make up of his brain and forced him to start making rational decisions. The world became a better place for old growth forests, when John Howard joined the Greens party.
Danny hung his head, exhausted, and felt his breathing finally coming and going in normal gulps. The little old lady, caught up in the grace of the moment, removed her coat, and theatrically laid it on the bench, arranging Danny's arms onto his chest, and kissing him on the forehead. Danny took the opportunity to slip his hands out of his paws and undo the zipper. The people around were all preoccupied with their own private mourning, and the little old lady was busy condoning a couple of people with a lot of electrical equipment who kept staring at their feet, for interrupting a great performer at his work. So no one noticed his movement. The father, who had rolled under the bench in the rigours of his demonstration, emerged to join in the defence.
By the time they had allowed the radio people past, there was nothing left to nod at them but a tin bucket smothered in a mass of notes and coins, and an empty koala suit that was missing one foot.
© Laura Smith 2004
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