Category: Poetry

 …The man we knew was hooded and smoothed,/walked as a panther through hospital wards,/ secret, sleek & springing off the balls of his feet./Now his eyes pace, pale-irised and clever…

This set of six poems observes various types of relationship: intimate, collegial, family, cultural, and relationship to self.

 

1. Burn Thickness

 The man we knew was hooded and smoothed,
walked as a panther through hospital wards,
secret, sleek & springing off the balls of his feet.
Now his eyes pace, pale-irised and clever
– the only part of him unburnt
in a face ever bald-surprised and marbled.
And instead of hands, blurred knobs of flesh,
pinker than my rhododendrons.
His meal arrives, a shell-fish pasta tangle
I cringe & look away – what will he do?
But he talks of vineyards vats and politicians
and we listen on as time slides loose,
the problem of the knife & fork unnoticed
as he grows jungle-lithe and olive-skinned again.

2. Farmer Wants a Wife

That shamble bear cheeky grinned
Kings schooled shearer man
of the thousand acres (more).
What a hunk, hunkered down
alone & out of town
with work as all.
Welcome to my parlour (really) my old homestead
what a party – all that landed gentry stuff
‘cept he was red eyed, drinking rum.
Farmer wants a wife!
He joked. A woman warm, with wit,
with sparkling eyes and independent means!
Three years on, my spirit cold in dying light
it’s hold your tongue you cow you’re all the same
& I’m dizzy-dulled and shackled, numb and not-me.
And now I know farmer wants a wife
breathing barely, buried in the ground in a box beneath his feet
for always.

 

3. Usual Small Things

 I had an Uncle John,
the only uncle I have known.
He was old when I was young

& I thought of him as strange
because he was so plain and mild and kind.
Invariably behind the scenes
he’d hum around the house
as he pottered determinedly,
I never knew at what really
except he’d water plants by hand;
with hose he’d stand at garden shrubs
for what seemed like an age.

He had a patience and a peace
quite alien to me.
Most nights he’d sit alone
with his transistor radio
listening to Beethoven or Brahms.

Aunty would talk and smoke and watch TV
she rarely ventured out
while Uncle John would fetch or do
what needed to be done.

Theirs seemed to be a happy home
voices never raised
it was simple and so restful
and I felt no undertows.

How I wished I could be theirs for good
not just at holidays.

Years later I was in Wales
when I learned that Uncle John had passed away.
He’d been on his daily bushland walk:
his heart had burst at the last
just doing one of his usual small things.

 

4. Crystal

I may still chip
but softly
or crack
not deeply
perhaps a surface scratch, band-aided.
I have filled.
Stabilised.
Blunted.
Gone are the days as a girl
when, with a twirl & a polished smile
I’d slice a man to the bone.
Countless shards I’ve left lodged in careless hearts
if I was pressured, poorly packed or tagged
too loosely held.
A flick-ping crystal edge
innocently open, transparently
waiting, watching for that clumsy move,
your scars mere proof
I had to self-protect.

 

5. My Cosy Sunday

 A flutter fuss, a sparrow’s cry & I look up  – page gone –
through panes of lead framed glass
a tussle in my tulip tree, now whip wet black & bare.
This September snow lets spring buds know
it’s not quite safe – but soon.
That’s when I see a sudden sun
strolling bright past my front yard
a woman, black-skinned, dressed in flames
which leap and flare with every roll
of graceful hip & long-legged glide
her queenly head dressed high, all hail,
her beauty warms our frigid town.

 

I want to tell her welcome & I’m sorry it’s so cold,
that so many here are fearful but it’s really very safe,
the only danger, strangely,
a people’s disconnect from soul.

 

6. Reflect-less

She was
clear eyed shining twenty:twenty
her own level
believed and bevelled
perfectly bedroomed.
So when exactly did she fall
from the cutting edge
fell hook line and
stupidly cut and bled.
Her view opaqued and slowed
She blurred with grey spot and blotch
belied, blank-eyed,
unseen
while evolving
some third eye
to an inner vision (another poem).
Now just for appearances she hangs
above fire between bookshelves
in 3D glass blocks angled
fly-eyed
mosaic-ed madly.

 

Download a PDF of “Six Poems”

…another day/ another hour/another step towards closing my family’s bookstore forever/antsy with a feeling like sadness/antsy with feelings I don’t understand/ attempting to numb myself with work/ biting my lower lip until I taste blood/ blinking back tears as I pull apart the shelves…

This poem is an excerpt from my young adult verse-novel, The Notebook of Teagan Trace, which I am writing in a multitude of poetic forms. An abecedarian poem is an acrostic form that begins each line with successive letters of the alphabet. 

 

The Poet: an Abecedarian Poem

another day

another hour

another step towards closing my family’s bookstore forever

 

antsy with a feeling like sadness

antsy with feelings I don’t understand

 

attempting to numb myself with work

 

biting my lower lip until I taste blood

 

blinking back tears as I pull apart the shelves

books of biographies

books of play scripts

books of poetry

books that I’ve looked at everyday, familiar as family

 

boxing away years of memory

 

caffeinated on too many cappuccinos, Mom bounces round the shop

clearing the rusty filing cabinet

clearing the non-fiction shelves

clearing the textbooks

 

cloaking the SALE! EVERYTHING 25-75% OFF sign with a new one that says

closing

closing

closing

 

Dad hiding out in the back office

dazed expression on his face as he stares into his screensaver

Depressed, Mom whispers as she zips past me

 

dictionary definition: dejected, despairing, despondent, dismal, distressed

 

door bell jingles, but no one goes to see but me

dressed in sleek black pants and a red v-neck top, a woman a little younger

    than Mom enters the shop

each arm adorned with wooden bangles

ebony hair pulled back into a bun

 

eyes meeting mine, she smiles

 

Finally found you, she says. I’ve heard you’re one of the few bookshops that

    still stocks poetry. But I’m sorry to see you’re closing

 

fingers fumbling at my sides, I tell her in a

flat-toned voice how all books are 75%, for her to let me know if she needs

    any help

 

folding her hands, she says she’s

foraging for one book in particular

 

Forgetting: A History, a book of poems by Zara Valentine

 

Frivolous of me, really, she says. I gave too many away when it first came out,

    and now I only have a few left

Funny how you never think of your first book going out of print

 

goggle-eyed, I stare at her – she’s the author?

goose pimples creeping up my arms because I’ve never met a published

    poet before

 

gradually I get a grip

guide her to the poetry section

 

hastily, I thumb through what’s left on the shelf – H, I, J, K

head not working, I skip through V straight to Z

heat on my cheeks as I hunt through the stack

 

Here, I say, handing her the shiny black book, edges bent

hibiscus flowers decorating the front cover

 

holding the book to her chest, she breathes out. Thank you

How wonderful

 

I am not able to stand it anymore, and I blurt out, So you’re the poet who

    wrote this?

 

I am, she says, I’m Zara

 

I am fumbling now, a million questions spluttering out

I ask her how she first got published

I ask her how she started writing

I ask her if she always wanted to be a poet

I ask her if she keeps a notebook

I ask her where her books sell, since big chains don’t stock much poetry,

    and independents like ours are closing down

I ask her why, when, how she got published when poetry’s considered dead,

    dead, dead

 

I even start telling her about my own notebook, how I’m always scribbling

    poems and poem-like words and things like cinquains and acrostics

I say I’m sure my poems aren’t as good as hers

 

in the background, Mom flits around the shop, giving me eyes to come help,

    but I ignore her

 

Inexpressible reasons why I started to write, Zara says, telling me about the

influence of English teachers, her insatiable appetite for books, her mother dying

    when she was eight, giving her the constant itch to create

initially working as a secretary, writing poems in the hours after work

innate feeling that poetry is what she should do, money or no money, sent her

    first manuscript to fifty-one publishers before she got a yes from a

    small publishing house, Metaphor

inner strengthening when Metaphor filed for bankruptcy just months after they

  published Forgetting

inspired by her dad to keep writing, who told her not to listen to people who

    said writing poetry was useless

involved in writing a sixth book now

 

It’s great to hear you write, Zara says, Do you have any poetry here I could

    read? And tell me, what was your name?

 

jack-in-the-box in my chest, I tell her Teagan, Teagan Trace

jittery legs

jumpy

 

knowing my notebook’s on the floor beside me

 

lapse of time before I reach down and pick it up

leaking sweat as I hand it to her

 

letting Zara leaf through my notebook

letting Zara – someone I just met – read poems I haven’t even shown my best friend

    or my parents

 

looking at her face as she reads

looking hard at every blink and lip twitch, wondering what it means

 

lunacy

 

millions of moments march by before Zara looks up

mouth moving slow motion, she says, Your poems are strong, Teagan.

     They’ve got great energy.

Must say, I think your cinquain sequence is my favourite

 

nervously, I start to say that my poems aren’t that good, they’re just silly things

    I write to pass the time

neurons neurotically flittering, I realize I sound just like my grandma

 

now she locks her gaze on me

now Zara asks, Have you ever thought of making poetry your career?

 

o yes I’ve thought of it

of getting books published

of spending every day writing at a desk

 

only I have always thought I had to be something else – a lawyer, a stockbroker,

    a dentist

only I think of Grandma saying poetry’s dead

only I’m packing away books in my family’s shop that’s closing down

 

ooh but my heart sings yes, yes, yes

outlandish to think of doing anything else

 

palimpsest of my heart

palpable

pervasive

 

poetry

 

quaky-legged, I ask Zara, But how do you make money?

 

Quite a few people still read poetry, you know, she says with a wink

 

really honestly, though, Zara admits that she

receives little recompense for her work

rectified her finances for awhile by waitressing part-time

reduced her spending

resolved her situation by starting a small online business, so now

    she can write all day and fiddle with her business at night

Risky? she says. Perhaps. But I know I wouldn’t be happy if I couldn’t write

 

she tells me I can do this, too

she tells me I should follow my gut

she tells me not to listen to people who say poetry’s dead

 

somewhere behind us, Mom shouts my name

 

Think you better go, Zara says

 

throat closing up, I nod

together Zara and I wander towards the door

 

tongue-tied

topple-toed

tripping over my words, I tell her not to worry about paying for her book

 

unexpectedly, she says, I’d actually like you to have it. And here…

unfastening her purse, she digs out her card

urging it into my hands with the book

 

verbal functions no longer working

verging (stupidly) on the point of tears

Very nice of you, I splutter, thank you

 

Where are you, Teagan? Mom calls

 

whirling around to go, Zara says, Keep writing!

 

writing

writing

writing

writing already in my head

 

writing poems

writing poems

 

writing Zara an email: I can’t say how much I loved meeting you

xoxo

 

yelling to Mom that I’m coming

 

Zara’s words

zigzagging

zipping

zooming as I go

 

Download a pdf of The Poet

 

…The behemoth towers/ A fractured edge of the city/ Forged in its rows of sightless eyes/ And as darkness smears the day/ An elevator grinds and rumbles/Fills its belly with humanity/Radios and televisions fuse/In a babbled soundtrack/
From a selection of poems titled The Citadel
 
‘Whilst the night deepens/ The mortals within/ Fortify against the incubus of the dark’
 

THE TOWER

The behemoth towers

A fractured edge of the city

Forged in its rows of sightless eyes

And as darkness smears the day

An elevator grinds and rumbles

Fills its belly with humanity

 

Radios and televisions fuse

In a babbled soundtrack

With the crackle and spit of pans

That dance and leap in ritual

Above the fetor and clabber

Of yellowing stoves

 

Somewhere a baby cries

Dogs bark

A plane whines overhead

 

Whilst the night deepens

The mortals within

Fortify against the incubus of the dark

And when heavy muses surface

The dreamless and the empty

Fill in a chimera of icons.

 

UNIT 3

There is one within who sits

A reluctant companion to the night

Circled by cobras of smoke and regret

She rolls another cigarette

Dwells on her creaseless face

Her adamant and tight body

Plundered by the years

The hands of time dragging

Straining and stretching her

 

Into another shape

She no longer reads time

In the faces of people or of clocks

For time is no longer on her side

 

She waits for him

He who is plunging his memory

Into a bracing splash of the past

Whetting dry frustration

With the potent promises of youth.

 

UNIT 8

He lies

Bible pyjama’d close

Dreaming of knock-knocking

Peddling his brand of religion

On glossy pamphlets printed in China

Converting his way to paradise

While Armageddon looms

 

She summons him now

Through the screened door

And the deep bee-drone

 

Of a distant lawnmower

Provides background harmony

As her weeping hair

Sullies his body

With wanting and pain

 

His sin sputters and spills

Into the yielding mattress

That holds him tenderly

Under a heavy crucifix

Rigid against the peeling wall

While in the kitchen

The obscene dishes nag to be washed.

 

UNIT 4

She drifts

Creamy and bubbled

In his party-hatted

Hip hip hooray love

 

He suspends her

Dulls her senses in fairy-floss solace

Pads the enormity of hundreds and thousands

In soft white bread

 

Still she yearns for the cut and slice of life

The ache that scratches pen to paper

As words come serrated and sharp

Stained with reality

 

In the slumber before dawn

She dreams him away

Before sweet-toothed and longing

She calls for him

To float once again

A lounging marshmallow

On the hot chocolate of his love.

 

UNIT 13

A shrine of burnished trophies

And effigies suspended in frames and time

Conjure a haunting apparition of her daughter

One year in the ground

 

Her dreaming moves with a moaning wind

Through the graveyard until she watches herself

Dusting the plastic flowers that hold their shape

Against the hard glint of black marble

 

The polished surface interns her

In a back to front present

Where time twists and contorts

Uncanny and out of order

 

Crumpled and invalid her will lies

In the bottom drawer of her being

While her empty womb

Frets for the forsaken babies

 

This grave calls and claims her

Yet she must linger until her name

Lies in the hollows of a headstone

To be uttered in silence by a passing stranger

 

Enshrouding her is a vision

Of the ground taking her under

As her daughter holds wilting flowers above

In the melting colours of a sinking sun

 

She grieves for the earthbound birds

Whose feathers send the dust skyward

Summoning mirages of ghosts

In the clear morning light.

 

UNIT 12

Through the back door of his mind

He seeks to read the shifting signs

Of her artistry that lies in covert stains

Or inscribed in the soft sands that surround him

 

She is the black ink of his secret imagery

Indelible marks smudged in his unknown

Surging now as dancing signifiers

In the bewitching hour of his dreaming

 

When the day slides through shallow curtains

His thinking slowly rises

While wheelie bins

Sprawled open-mouthed

Like fat ancient Greeks

Purged of night-time ritual

Lie dew splashed and winking

In the sane morning sun.

 

Download a pdf of ‘The Citadel’