Backyard Ink, Ramona Hester

Your naval medals commemorate

 

twenty years of undetected crime

that’s the salty term

your sun wrecked mates throw ‘round

inked like youngsters.

 

Caught on the web between your thumb and forefinger

a butterfly

in Hong Kong backyard ink

a coloured Emperor

a sailor’s papillon

seafaring homage to the wing.

In the 70’s it flew for your children

with a father’s magic

barely resting and so hard to catch.

 

The rest –

the full seascape – began with Keith

as his health sank

you began to court the blue needle

in an effort to feel your own pain

and perhaps

through the barrel

to suck some away from him

 

You taught your willing flesh Greek

four lines across the heart:

greater love

has no man but this

that one should lay down his life

for his friends

the truth sits warmly beneath your gulf medals

 

There will be no mistaking you at the morgue

 

how blue those pictures will be

against porcelain skin

when quiet flesh rests on a bed

of stainless steel, you take a breath

Jesus rises on the cross, chest expanding

nightmare ending

 

just about where I would place an ECG lead

ancient serpent disappears beneath Greek

burrows into your ribcage

slips between pericardium and chest wall

comes up for air at the fifth rib then,

snaking hipwards

is crudely arrested

by a sword through the head

unnatural iconographic end! – the promise was to crush

swords not preferred ‘til mediaeval rush

of tangled crusade push

and tempered steel

subvert the real

the naked heel of God deemed

insufficient.

surely man’s own implement

could not bring about this promised Word

and yet

every pirate needs a sword.

you told me

gold ring wobbling

on mature cartilage your

earring was commemorative

every sailor who rounds the Cape

has his ear pierced I believed you

then called you a bastard call me

anything you like you said after

twenty full years in the navy I’ve

heard every swearword going

so I asked you to elaborate

and it was true

you  h

a

v

e

 

you have below your navel

an ellipsis of un-inked flesh

from flank to flank

carrying a different

skillful mark where

,

tattoo postponed —-

a doctor reworked your insides

hid art’s Dacron mesh secret

 

Download a pdf of Backyard Ink

Ramona Kennedy

Ramona returned to Sydney in 2010 after ten years living and working in Asia. So many people told her she ought to write a book that she enrolled at Macquarie University, bought a new computer, and worked to learn everything from scratch. Her writing has been described as ‘beautiful, evocative and disturbing’ by someone who knows about these things. They only said it once, but that was enough. She did not need to eat for several days.

Author: Ramona Kennedy

Ramona returned to Sydney in 2010 after ten years living and working in Asia. So many people told her she ought to write a book that she enrolled at Macquarie University, bought a new computer, and worked to learn everything from scratch. Her writing has been described as ‘beautiful, evocative and disturbing’ by someone who knows about these things. They only said it once, but that was enough. She did not need to eat for several days.