One Poem by Corey Wade

Just a Game of Horseshoes.

Going to the beach these days can be rather lame
A woman kept screaming about a game of horseshoes
I didn’t understand how horseshoes could be so important
Or what there could be to argue about
Either the horseshoe makes it around the ring or it doesn’t
But this woman, this fat woman
Kept screaming about horseshoes
Two and a half hours later
She was still playing
She wasn't screaming any longer
But she was real into the game
The score was fifteen thirteen
I watched a couple throws
When she finally made one she let out a yahoo
I thought they’d do better after playing for so long
In paddleball you keep getting better
The others in the party just watched them play
They were watching two and a half hours earlier
She wasn't that good or anything
It was just a freakin' game of horseshoes

“Corey Wade studied under Neeli Cherkovski at the New College of California where he earned an M.F.A. in Creative Writing. Wade’s “Memoirs of a White Arab-American” was excerpted in the Berkeley Daily Planet before being published in Mizna. A former DJ of Berkeley Liberation Radio, Wade edited zines in Indiana featuring the writings of political prisoners. Currently, he teaches math at Berkeley Independent Study.”

A Poem / Three Paintings by Uzeyir Lokman Cayci.

Those who dance to the rhythm of their own music.

Those who nourish themselves on meats, dairy products and desserts
Cannot estimate you at your fair value.

Even if stone cracked, you cannot make them open
The windows of their farm …
People like you are not included in their center of interest
You do not exist …
Hereafter you must know
That they do not have time to bless you!

Their eyes are always fixed from above you
While they bow
With smiles above their double chins
Before the sovereign...the sultan.
Do you think for an instant that they acknowledge you?

If you ask my opinion on this subject
It is because the ends of their twine
Are in the hands of other people.
Don't take exception to the fact
That they are taken for kings!

Do not wait for them
In the wrong places
Vainly hoping
They will consider you a man …

Even if you write hundreds of letters
To these men of the closed doors
Intending to see or speak to them
You will not receive a single response …
Be wary and attentive;
Above everything
Allow them their haughty airs.
By thinking themselves important
They will look at you scornfully!

They well like fondling
Each others' backs …
It is no longer to the point
To listen to their dialogues "with admiration"
To extol their writings "enthusiastically"
To reward their facts "by clapping" …

Do not waste your time
Or put your attention here …
Think of other things.

by Uzeyir Lokman Cayci.
Paris, 20.06.2007.

French free verse translated into English free verse
by Joneve McCormick.

“Uzeyir Lokman Cayci is a poet, a writer, a versatile artist... He was born in 1949 in Bor that is one of the beautiful cities of Turkey. He attended primary and high school there. And then he graduated as an Architect - Designer of Industry from The Fine Arts Academy of State in Istanbul. His important works are, Akşamların Durağı , Karar, he has many poetries, stories and articles as well. It was called every body attention to his fine arts drawing / painting pictures since 14 years old. His poetries were translated into French by Yakup YURT who loves art. The Reward of Eagerness was given by The Radio NPS of Holland in 1999 and The Reward of Palmares was given by The Organization of Les Amis de Thalie in France to him. He placed in a poem competition from the same Organization at the same year too. He works in The Center of Adult Education ( AFPA) at present.”

“In the Spring of 2002, my dear friend, Sara Russell, Editor of Poetry Life and Times (UK) contacted me via e-mail, asking me whether I would volunteer to translate several poems by an internationally well established and highly creative Turkish poet, Üzeyir Lokman Çayci, who currently resides in France. I gladly obliged, and even offered to translate into English for the August, 2002. While Üzeyir Lokman Çayci is a very popular poet in Europe, he is not well-known in North America. Since so much of his poetry has been translated into equally fine French verse, and is now being gradually translated into English as well, I thought best to formally introduce one of the world's most illustrious poets to the North American literary scene. I should also note, in passing, that Üzeyir Lokman Çayci has his official Turkish-French translator, Yakup Yurt, who has consistently penned some very moving French renditions of Üzeyir's original Turkish verse. Since I myself, as one of three or four English translators (the others being F.J. Bergmann and Joneve McMcCormick) , do not understand Turkish at all, I must rely completely on the faithfulness of Yakup Yurt's French translations. That his translations are both accurate and just we may, however, rest assured. It is also notable that all of his English translators have exercised the same measure of care and sensibility in their translations of Üzeyir Lokman Çayci's splendid poems. This can be readily attested by the fact that there exists a remarkable consistency in wording and in tone of the English translations effected by the translators mentioned here.- Richard VALLANCE.”

Three Poems by Ian C. Smith.

Taking Advantage.

I could slip into the musty past
with relish, double my money
- hey, I would be wise, my mind is fast,
my brilliance time-travels with me!
Then, a woman, eyes soft as dew,
& my stupidity breaks through.


Oblivion.

The dark mind feeds our need to be alone
despite Christmas cheer, circled stock reports
club membership, dinner invitations
the insistent mobile’s pet-like status
the dark mind feeds our need to be alone.

Beneath life’s swift current death’s shadow runs
despite the body’s enslavement by sex
anthologies of children, their crow cries
the diary’s orderly despotism
beneath life’s swift current death’s shadow runs.


A Tasmanian Tragedy.

A fresh wind blew six sail-rigged kayaks
Around the coast of Flinders Island,
Each small square sail a vibrant colour.
On the left, ancient geology
To their right, Bass Strait keeping secrets.

Parrot fish slalomed beneath their wakes
Which soon vanished in the choppy swell
And fragments of paper nautilus
Fragile in the pale light, starred the shore,
The rocky backdrop surrealist art.

Four men, two women, robust people
Sighted by beach walkers and poets
Touched by their independence and grace,
Blown past a point near Wyballena.
We all read the sober theories.

Fishermen’s junk and driftwood were probed
Along the tidelines by dour searchers
Who told me of hearing grievous cries
As wrong as a fishhook in the eye
While the wind trembled through the ti-tree.


“Ian C Smith lives in the Gippsland Lakes region of Victoria. His work has appeared recently in The Best Australian Poetry, Cordite, Eureka Street, Island, Sleepers Almanac, Southerly, & Westerly. His most recent book is Lost Language of the Heart published by Ginninderra.”

Four Poems from Leigh Vandebogart.

“this is for you, and you, and you”

You can feel the ocean
in the air this morning,
waves in every stupid raindrop,
and the garbagemen sound like seagulls
when they say hi.

Your voice is on my phone, so I listen
mostly out of curiosity,
not because I care
(don’t get the two confused).
It’s the start of a new week and I’m disappointed
again, already, thank you.

Everyone clicks away behind our eyeballs,
squinting to make sense;
no-one knows what we want.
But here –
listen, carefully, and watch the sidewalks.
Trip once and you’re done.
Bye-bye.


“Lobby Discoveries”

Baby dolls and bumble bees,
dead things litter the steps and stairs and checkerboard floor;
welcome home.

Wednesday night and it’s near 80 degrees even
late, late, too hot to sleep.
Go upstairs, 4th floor,
lay flat and listen to the music and breathe and watch the curtains
float in the dark and in the breeze.

Those are instructions, and that was –
that was a toy, look at it, a toy
on the floor, black and white squares surrounding its
baby doll face, and look –
look at it now!
Now it’s out the door,
headfirst,
listening
and learning to live
again,
these nights.


“you know what we are doing”

There is a page in this book, and then there is
another page, and then another,
and that is how pages work,
okay?
Turn them and see and then
question and –
look, we are on the 10th floor of a really tall building, taller than tall,
more than 10 floors, look!

Look at us.

Pages and windows and shadows.
Read the words and look out,
look out at the trees below, and love them.
Trees.
Look at the words, look out the window.
Envy the words on that page and this page.
The world.
The sky.
The open air.
10 story fall.
The looking, the windows, the last the last the last, the
long, long branches
of the tall, tall trees.


“Not Me, I’m Not It”

I got the moon confused
with your smile again.
How is this constantly happening?
Maybe you don’t believe me.

My nails are growing, and so are yours –
I watch them.
Doesn’t that count for anything?
Dig them into your skin, and mine, deep. Deeper.
Let’s bleed together, so you can see that
this is all for you.

I hope for the wind and the rain
because that’s all I have.
Watch me, under the roof,
listen to these footsteps and follow.

Listen, baby –
I guess I do miss you
sometimes.
I don’t know what more you want.


“Especially When Watched”

The oceans and the seas are laughing,
because we know nothing and we
dance too much. Or maybe
the waves are laughing because
we don’t dance enough and things
are getting hard right now.

Look at all of the stranded foam,
crushed shells,
translucent jellyfish like imaginary cakes,
and look at all the sand! Oh my god,
don’t forget about the sand,
of course sand,
all of it listening to the laughter, laughter, but
not laughing, just
laying there, laying, listening
in the way only dead things can.

We walk and we do not know,
and we try hard not to dance,
or
we try very hard to dance well,
all the while with the booming
crashing
laughter of the water.

“Leigh Vandebogart is a recent Brooklyn transplant, by way of Albany, NY. She is currently a special education teacher at a middle school in Queens, and just finished her first year teaching sixth grade. When she isn't in front of a class and wrangling twelve-year-olds, she pets and looks at her cats, writes poems, walks around Brooklyn, and drinks beverages of all sorts. She's had poems published in Chronogram Magazine; in Other: ______, an Albany poetry publication; and in a chapbook through FootHills Publishing entitled liquid starlight and nonsense (even though she prefers you ignore the chapbook’s existence entirely).”

A Short Story by Candace Petrik.

Rodney

Hiram Grady lived on our street in the house with no garden, just high grass that his grown-up son sometimes mowed on Sundays. Other times my parents would send me round.

‘You’ll do this for him, Aaron.’ They threatened to lock me outside if I didn’t get some sun voluntarily. ‘What could you do all day in that room of yours?’

I didn’t like going inside Mr Grady’s house. It was an old weatherboard that was white originally, but the front porch had split back to the cheap wood so you could hardly tell. Gravel for a driveway, a gravel yard out back with bits of grass sprouting along the fence, a puddle, a single tree. Inside wasn’t much better. Old furniture covered in dust, a lounge set that smelt like medicine. Carpet covered in food stains and something that looked like cat hair, but he didn’t have a cat. Mr Grady was in his nineties and when he walked it was slowly, like a blind man feeling the way with his hands. I’d never known anyone that old. None of my grandparents were still alive, aside from a grandfather I hadn’t met because he lived in England and dad said he wasn’t very nice.

Mr Grady kept his lawnmower in the garage, along with the car he never drove and the tools he never used. He would stand over me as I tried to start it, my stringy arms yanking and shoving. They’d always end up aching by the time it began chugging away. I’d drag it outside and push it back and forth along the patch of lawn, which was half dried and yellowed. Not grass really, but a lot of weeds. Mr Grady would stick around, watching in the cold as I struggled.

I didn’t like doing his lawn because he’d talk at me over the noise and I couldn’t hear clearly, but he didn’t seem to get that. He had a friend called Rodney who was giving him problems. That much I could figure out. When I’d finished the job I usually tried to escape quickly, citing homework as an excuse. Or sport practice. Or a friend I had to meet. I didn’t care what the lie was so long as I thought of it fast. But he would keep talking, following me inside. Sometimes I couldn’t find a polite way to break him off, had to back towards the door bit by bit and wait. Standing there awkwardly, my fingers were ready on the handle.

‘Rodney is like having a nosebleed all the time,’ he said. ‘That’s how it feels. Like a sinus infection.’

            ‘Maybe you shouldn’t be his friend,’ I replied. He looked at me as if I was incredibly stupid, but this gave me a chance to duck out the front door and mumble a quick goodbye.

His strangeness seemed to go right over my parents’ heads, or maybe it was just something they expected of old people. Something people would eventually expect of them. It’s a particular Saturday that bothers me the most. Mum and dad made me visit Mr Grady that day, even though his lawn was fine. I’d mown it the Sunday before. I remember I’d planned to stay inside the entire weekend and play this new game I’d borrowed from the video store, without having to take breaks for school or homework. Maybe just toilet breaks. Mum said that was rubbish, and wouldn’t let me back inside until I’d gone down the road. Mr Grady was drinking tea with great difficulty when I let myself in. He’d spilt it down his woolly jumper and was dribbling some from his chin.

‘Sorry,’ he said, as I cleaned him up with a tea towel. ‘Rodney hates tea.’

He looked down at his hands, seemingly disappointed in them. I wanted to ask where Rodney was but felt strange about it.

‘He used to be a laugh,’ he offered. ‘He’s just bored with me now.’

I nodded. I wanted to find a quick way out, but my parents would notice if I came back right away.

‘You’d like him, Aaron,’ he shrugged, putting a hand to his ear like he wanted to soothe something.

‘Mr Grady, do you need some Panadol?’

‘Hiram,’ he corrected. ‘No, no it’s fine. Rodney’s just a bit active today.’

‘Where is he?’ I asked, just to say it. Just because I knew I had to say it or I’d hear about him on end without even knowing what he looked like. For all I knew he was some old guy Hiram Grady had known in the war, someone who was long dead. Mr Grady grinned at my question though, and pointed to his ear. He pointed to his mouth. He pointed to his eyes. I looked away, smiling with some embarrassment.

‘That’s nice.’

‘You don’t get it.’ He muttered. ‘That’s alright, how could you get it?’

‘I have to get back home.’

‘No you don’t,’ he said. ‘You sit now, right there.’ He gestured to the old, beaten couch. I shook my head, crossing my arms like this could protect me.

‘I’ll let you meet him,’ Mr Grady offered, his voice rising with a tiny bit of relief at the idea. ‘That’d be nice. Rodney would like that.’

‘I’m right, thanks.’

‘Do you want to know how long I’ve known Rodney?’ he asked. He seemed able to remain enthusiastic even if his audience was frowning plainly back at him. ‘Come now, don’t be like that Aaron.’

‘Fine,’ I said. ‘But I bet he doesn’t even exist.’

Mr Grady spluttered and coughed at that. It took me a moment to realise he was laughing at me, because it seemed to cause him a fair amount of pain to do it.

‘I’ve known Rodney for sixty years,’ he said. ‘Sixty! Can you imagine?’

I shrugged.

‘No, you can’t possibly. Sixty years, it almost seems obscene!’

‘Only if you don’t like him.’

‘I’ll tell you something,’ he said, pointing at me with one finger. ‘But you have to swear, cross your fingers and toes. Can you do that?’

I shrugged, ‘Why would I want to?’

He shook his head, ‘you have to swear it.’

‘Fine, I do. I swear.’

He seemed satisfied at that, because he was looking away now, thinking for a moment about how to break this great thing to me. I became impatient and sat down finally. That was the moment Rodney appeared. He came out in tiny metal pieces, some from an ear, some from a nostril. Mr Grady opened his mouth and a few bits of Rodney crawled out through there. I didn’t speak, couldn’t as I watched him assemble into a tiny figure, barely the size of my hand. I took a few steps backwards.

‘Rodney, say hello,’ Mr Grady said. He gulped out his breaths, as if the air had suddenly turned hard like water. ‘This is Aaron, you say hello.’

Rodney blinked his robot eyes but did no such thing.

‘He’s just shy, it’s alright. You say hi first.’

‘Hi,’ I managed.

Rodney seemed to smile, but it’s hard to tell with robots, especially robots this small. His features were hard, grey. Lidded slits glowed in the place of eyes, a thin line of metal stood in for a mouth, he had no nose. His mouth seemed to move slightly, but I may have imagined that.

‘Look at that smile!’ Mr Grady said. ‘Go on now, why don’t the two of you find something to play at, and let me lie down for a moment?’

It didn’t seem like I had a choice, because Mr Grady started to slowly lie himself down on the couch I had been sitting on, forcing me off it. He closed his eyes and didn’t try to talk again. Rodney and I watched each other, both uncertain of what we were supposed to do. I thought of being polite and asking him what his hobbies were and what he liked to eat, but realised robots mightn’t be into anything. Especially robots that live inside people. I didn’t want to turn my back on him, worried about what he was capable of. But he seemed friendly enough, like someone else’s pet dog. Cautious, but willing to make new friends.

‘I live in number twenty,’ I said, pointing in my house’s direction. ‘It’s nice, we have a trampoline.’

Rodney didn’t respond. Just watched.

‘Is Mr Grady nice to you?’

I didn’t expect a reply, not really. I just wanted Mr Grady to hear me making an effort and then I could go home and play video games and forget all of this. I made a move towards Mr Grady then, tried to wake him, giving him a light shove. Rodney moved when I moved. He made a sharp beeping noise, one that became louder and louder like a smoke detector. Like a fire alarm. I backed off, putting my hands over my ears.

‘Stop it!’

But he didn’t. Mr Grady hadn’t stirred. He didn’t even seem to be breathing. I leant over him and felt his face. He was still warm, but he was missing something. His chest wasn’t rising and falling. Rodney’s beeping had become so loud that my ears had begun to ring, to ache and pop like they do when you’re on a plane coming in for a landing.

‘Shut up shut up!’ I couldn’t even hear myself yell. Rodney seemed to. It took me a few moments to notice the silence because my ears continued to ring, to echo the loud noise.

‘It’s not my fault,’ I said. ‘He’s ok. He’s fine!’ Rodney didn’t seem to agree. I’d never seen a dead person, especially not a dead person I’d known. Once I saw a fox lying on its side, I passed it on my walk to school. It had blood and dirt crusted into its fur, a tongue poking out from its stiff mouth. Mr Grady just seemed to be sleeping and I decided that for all I knew he was. So I didn’t call the police. Or a hospital or whoever you were meant to call when someone really old died. Maybe if I left quickly I could pretend I hadn’t even visited, could go to the shopping centre and spend all day there and come home at the end believing that my day had been entirely different. Rodney was watching me closely, staying still like a little animal that would bolt if frightened off. When I moved towards the front door, he walked tiny steps in my direction.

‘Don’t you have any other friends?’ I asked. He didn’t seem to think so. ‘I’m not your friend, Rodney.’

I couldn’t just leave him there. I sat on the floor, unable to go home, unable to leave. I gave Rodney a look before I glanced back over at Mr Grady. He was perfectly quiet, like a doll. That’s when I picked up the phone and called my mum. She said I was making it up, but I said he really wasn’t moving, not at all.

‘But he could be ok,’ I said. ‘Don’t you think?’

‘Stay there,’ she ordered, as if my leaving the house would make Mr Grady any more alive or dead. Rodney was still standing, watching me with suspicion. I took off my jumper.

‘You’re gonna have to hide.’ I hesitated, but he let me pick him up. He was cold, but light. He didn’t make a noise as I wrapped him inside the material, unsure of where he would hide after I smuggled him home. My ears tickled at the thought, but I pushed it aside when I heard my mother knocking loudly at the door.

“Candace Petrik is 27 and lives in Melbourne. She enjoys writing short stories and has a special place in her heart for Young Adult Fiction. She is currently writing a YA novel and wrote the above story on a dare. She likes robots quite a lot.”

Eight Poems from Barbara Panos.

Indifference?

She slept on the cold stone bench in front of the courthouse,

Covered by a newspaper quilt

Once she had laughter and hope

He was a decorated soldier in the war

In a cardboard home,

He listened to the rain falling and remembered with pain

A lost life with wife and children

 

Complete and True

No expectations, unmet promises, only truth

Love complete and true

Sense of you and me separate and equal

No unsatisfied layers of self seeking

Find ones whole being, true

Life and direction dancing in all directions

“I luv you” waiting

Meet at the life dance studio for the last dance

Clench my hand tight and true

Complete?

 

Ride her the distance

She drives the length, curves and my thighs grasp her.  We move left and glide together like a ski on the white powder. She makes a sound and purrs as pressure is put on throttle. The sensation pulses through my inner legs up to my sides then… a small cramp. Ride her hard and fast, curvaceous, and well built made before the millennium. Shimmering, exquisite and what a set of grips she has. Liquid juice brings energy to her parts and she hums like an adolescent boy sitting at the stand at cheer leading practice. Is it a one night stand or just kick up the kick stand and straddle her.  What direction or distance? Go the distance and ride hard.

 

Diddly Squat!

Bankruptcy, divorce

Then Tony the tow truck driver

Lifts his family jewels and sniffles

Mumbles as he hijacks’ the neighbours’ BMW back to shyster’s Ville,

Unemployed economics’

Buy lemon aide from 2 eight year olds on the corner of here and now where

Scratch my armpit and tug on my undies from my crotch

It all amounts to diddly squat and reality sets in

Aint got diddly squat but got me!

 

Lady said…….

Under the Happy tree she sits, skin chocolate and sun dried

Food from others waste cans,

Life walks away from her but only at night when she sleeps under this tree

Fearful of the dawn and again no compassion, no mercy, relives her the demons that come to visit her in her mind such Clark G., the devil and …..Elvis

Dreams and Hopes crumble and whether away under the tree and in the heat and melted

But where do I find home again?  Lady said, ”know me as the lady and lay me down under the happy tree and know my pleasure and pain”.

 

Caliente

Sweat dripping, suicidal clinging

Pressed linen creased, body transparent

Mono syllabic grunts

No attachment only skin touching

Sensual stares, light up, take a drag

Ahhh!

Fly on the window

Crawl south over splintered wood and paint

Hang on cracked corner pane

Step outside, hell and hot wind

Baking my wings but hold fast

Wait

Dog shits on the concrete cracks,

At last heaven

Time

Time of the Essence

Essence of time

Abandonment

No, only song of minutes

Seconds

Fear, no time fleeting on the hands

Dam it, Late to work again

“Barbara Panos lives in Arizona and works with the homeless and hs donkeys, chickens, dogs and a cow.  I live with my partner of 4 years and she is a PA.  Writing for the last 3 years, I  hope someday to publish to make a small living and cut back on my work and stay home.”

'Nose Splatter' by Lee Sandwith.

'Nose Splatter' by Lee Sandwith.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Lee Sandwith is a Melbourne based actress and photographer with diverse experience in portraiture, event and fine art photography. She has exhibited her photographs widely and has been published in a number of publications including Broadsheet,  Platform and Dot Dot Dash Magazines. She also has a number professional film, television and theatre performance credits to her name and has directed music videos, theatre and film productions. Having the professional experience and practice of working behind and in front of the camera, Lee has a unique talent of being able to synthesize and execute all features of the photographic process to create truly impressive images...."

One Novel-Length Extract from Shannon Hayes' Manuscript 'Clear'

"...the breeze like ghosts upon the flesh (homeless and shivering) I could just see his boys, those sultry wingless vultures, glittering dark spat towards the amphitheatres; which even in the moonlight still wore their eyebrows of dried nettles an old man’s bristly white; past the concrete dried out in blobs like those dinosaur shits he’d imagined and over the wire (so stretched and trod upon it had become part of the ground) heading into those man dug cliffs looming lung-like either side of the thin-necked track before the first chamber opened around them, milky black, with a blue veil of stars caught frazzled in the gum leaves; he liked the low ground, knew the creases and crevices there; the complications of stone and wood (and the darkness therein in which to hide) the abandoned quarry had, for him, two different beings; bleary-eyed upon the screen he heard (in the distance) the toilet flush, then the foot thump of someone sleep-walking back to bed; still they hadn’t played the clip (though the ads kept promising) so he waited, sloopy slurping micro-waved instant coffee until finally (finally!) he saw a man in angel wings with a slinky hi-hat snaking slithery through catacombs of reverbed guitar; ahh all done now...but what’s this? (pulling down on the stiff-lipped blind) the sky! not black anymore! rather, a pearlescent grey; and himself en-charged and all light headed; barefoot in tracksuit pants he roused the dog (Poor old Bessie, poisoned and buried under a lemon tree, only to have her successor dig her up and trot into the kitchen with her clay-clad skull in its’ jaws like a grotesque anniversary gift) from her slumber, smacking sluppy-lipped to faithfully follow him into these new side-headed wilds; Adam was born of himself then; in this creamy alien light; light-footed upon the grass surrounded by a mantric arpeggio of chiming birdsong (let us say the earrings of Eos) and it was as though he’d snuck through a secret flap and was now walking upon the true ghost of the world; a keeper of secrets now, and with something to keep; this suffusion of rock (and ghost guard gums, dreamy as the dry grass ghosts and swollen nettles) like a handful of shells, unwrapped (let us say in her hand) from which shone the Foodland Boomerang and the old prison road; Bessie shot off like a golden-tailed rocket into the grass toward some wafer of sound maybe only she and bats could here, leaving him, un-body guarded, to wander towards his epiphany; just there, in the clearing where the two cliffs met, trotted out from nowhere a fox; the two just stood, looking at each other, neither moving, amazed, like the thing was saying what the fuck are you doing here? It sniffed at the air a little and then just trotted off, past the old car wreck, leaving him to it; where was it? Japan? If you see a fox it means there’s about to be a death in the family (maybe that was just in the snow though) fine; he knew who he wanted it to be, and stood now looking at the burnt out wreck ( its’ roof caved-in from the generations of stone hurled upon it) at the base of the cliff that acted as corridor towards the main arena, guarded, hydra-like, by an enormously overgrown aloe vera (even the dark could not disguise the dusty menace of its’ serrated teeth and thick black hard-on) and beyond it; the grandest canyon, from the lip of which the poured forth the fields like Elysian moonlit paint; fukncuntsyeahIwannafuknpissonemfuknfukkersfuknpisstheshitoutofemyeahfuknshitthefukoutathefukncuntsfuknshitanpissonthefukofthecuntsfukthefukkersandshitthecuntoutofthefuknfuckofemfuknfuksshut the fuck up; he’d heard something; that sickening unmistakable crack of a misplaced foot upon a fallen bone dry branch; from our vantage point we had seen them coming, watched them, in fact, the whole way from above as they’d headed east through the widest passage towards the car; was disappointed, almost, in how easy it was; excited too though, because if they got past us now (if we lost them past the plant) then they were lost forever, for he knew the rock beyond as well as his own face, and that lot would have been scrambled up there like monkey shadows on velvet; it was my own ankle that alerted them, snuck down from the control room to say caught! (not just though, you had to actually touch one) and manoeuvring myself for the dash (ha!) to grab a handful of fleeting untucked shirt of victory when I broke it; billy tea (boiled with gum leaves) and the two of us sleepy (half sick on rocky road) staring into the fire; put the tent up in the dark over the squishy nodules of sheep shit felt even through the sleeping bags; Adam spent half the day hacking at a tree, convinced his ability to tie a one-handed sheep shank somehow cancelled out the physical chances of such a heavy green wood being fashioned successfully into a raft; tied in all together and launched it, grunting, into a watery grave so efficiently not even bubbles bothered to come up; cunt!; came back and tossed a desultory malley root into the flames ( we just kept doing it; adding these miss-shaped midgets ((not knowing that they were the bush-fuel equivalent of a nuclear reactor)) got so hot we had to move our tent and when the weather changed could still sit ten or so feet away from it bone dry under a steaming dome of disintegrated rain) this was before that though ( our scout leader, coming back to check, our little China syndrome still warm to the touch he reckoned, two weeks later) Mr Higganbottom (how could you not remember that!) incarnated now as Akela, in whose burnt-chop-fat-flecked kitchen we sat around the smeared smoky glass of the small round dining table awaiting the screen door bang of his coming with supplies; a bag of flour, some potatoes, sardines and bangers and beans; ohh he winked, slipping a handful of Nescafe sachets into our backpacks, don’t forget this; what he liked to call the scouting spirit; a small jerry can of petrol and three or four matchboxes in a re-sealable sandwich bag; you know the rules lads, only if it rains; un-wived now and waiting (with his plumber’s paunch) for Bagheera to arrive, heralded by the sound of a punctured muffler growling to a shake in the driveway and crept in through the clacky wood of the back screen with those eyes of his and the dark crescents under them like waning moons; acknowledged us with a nod, lighting the same cigarette which always seemed implanted in the breast of the long feathered bird drooping down his cheeks; and we drove for ages, with only the reflected cat’s eyes for company, pulsing, peeling off the miles, the flexuous bitumen eventually giving way to a gravel road that threw its’ looseness in lulling pops against the belly of the ute, then onto dirt (and that tight bladder wheeze of tyres) pinging to a stop; hauled out our backpacks and could just see the over the moonlit skin the smudge of trees down there by the river; descending again into that bite in the calves as we fell (half-puppeted by our packs and jerry can) down the sheep shorn slope waiting for gravity to arrive with Akela’s tail-lights in our hair; we settled back (next night) poking sticks into the embers just to watch the flames fuss from their disturbed sleep; worked out pretty soon too if you throw instant coffee granules into a fire you are rewarded with a moment of phosphorescence, so we burnt the lot, the packets too (most rewarding) that elusive unicorn, a green flame, sputtering before our dirt creased faces; TV of the homos wasn’t it? these shapes appearing magical that drugged the shapes within to sleep; and their skulls gathered in thick mono-browed boulders around the water, the moon glowering upon their opalescent craniums as they peeked, half sunk, through the ghost gums; behind them a cliff face rose a crumbly chocolate red, like this bend in the river was a baked black cherry cheesecake from which someone had just taken a slice; and our bellies so full now; cans of stew (sitting on the orange embers) coughing up gravy through the stabbed slits that sizzled and bubbled on the tin, slices of dropped fried potato sugar-dipped in ash and a charred meteorite of damper that we broke into for its’ still gooey salty innards; fukngrate he muttered approvingly, blowing on the flame engulfing his marshmallow like the recalcitrant eyelashes of a dandelion stuck on the end of a bent twig in his dough gluey fingers; and did seem to me a self-folded crick in the fabric of time and space; born to this; this otherness, of himself from whom the story of the world would unfold rather than be enfolded in, and that perhaps I was just a guest in his imagination; that all of this, where we were; who I was; would simply cease to exist once he stopped thinking about it; I stared into the fire, pulling on the cuffs of my jeans to feel the red heated bronze of them against my shins; Adam snorted and spat some percolated spume into the flames; ha!fuknJohn’sbroteheryeahhereckonsfuknhewasdoingherinfrontofthefuknfireplaceandpullshisshitoutanditfuknshootsinthefirefuknseesitshootfuknoverherfuknheadfukimaginethatseeinyufuknshitsizzlinonafuknlogfuk! the last of it slapped back in echo from the cliff; a game in itself, yelling just to hear the booming ghost of the sound; and from the throats of young titan’s such bizarre and thunderous servants born; shit-legs; piss-nose; cunt-knuckle; Cyclopses, rang back, briefly prowling the waterline, before returned again to silence; made him think of that Aborigine idea of someplace where every sound ever made is collected upon itself forever; again (like the rat) that his flesh was just used like the cover of an already written book; now even the river itself became an object of suspicion; no! the opposite; of recognition; aren’t they just supposed to snake around, changing course like a careering garden hose slowed down over millennia? yet here was this thing, girdled by agriculture, by industry, damned and drained and generally distorted into its’ present moribund shape; that all this land, sighing its’ parasolled pastoral majesty on the back of a postcard was in fact just the healed scar tissue of the hacked-up land before it; another coat, another dream, and that all of its’ past and present and future configurations and him and them and were and is were overlaid like stamps on the passport of the infinite; that everything was silver, with history branded into it, but the metal itself unchanged; we are borrowed, he thought, following me up the slope of the paddock towards the dirt road that delivered us; saw everything as a sort of mercury, the sky and earth and his own skin, the past and the future, saw it all sloshing upon the slightly denser banks of itself; a vision of Venice really, with the skin pulled off; there! (I pointed) it was unmistakable, that eerie suffused glow of distant unseen headlights moving its’ silvered mist between the long low flanks of the paddocks; fuknose he said, problyafarmer, and let the earth pull him in long moon eaten shapes back towards the fire, to his tales of shooting seed into flames, and all our other lies, bundled together, like unlit pyres cocooned around our bodies; I stared in, warm and flaky as that last en-blistered sausage roll left radiated in the school canteen; so many treats! those bogeys, rustling like muscle shells with each draw of air, those little clusters of sebum crunchy like dried sap on the scalp, that rich primal valley between the top of the thighs and the ball bag; so much to be scooped up in the fingernails to sniff and touch and taste! would have to wait of course, for privacy, and was happy to just keep heating them when Adam’s eyes shot into the darkness; wha..? shush! his hand held up, as though upon the lips of the air itself, shushing it, and staring into the rough spun shapes of chopped up caterpillar the spindled branches over there had borrowed from the near midnight wardrobe; both of us staring now, with the hiss and spit of cracklefire playing against a drum of thudding blood; those (what were they?) trees? bushes? a cross-between (where’s Darwin!) some lowdown thick-rooted things with a proper Latin name but known local as jillybarns or beetlebark with their tentacles swept out and curling as though stretched by the wind; and the host of an attention intent upon unthreading from their vespered mass the moonlit gleam of a scabbard say, or a sabre tooth; nothing; but still as statues, staring into the electric black beyond the fire; a rustle (was it?) that car! (I knew it) some yokel crept down to divide us with an axe! wecanhearyucunt, Adam called hoarsely; nothing; stopfuknaround; still nothing, and the nothingness, that passage of tangerine light spread from the fire into the darkness like a magic carpet, studied so hard that teacher and student became confused; I didn’t say move! Or did I? seemingly said to each shadowed blade of grass and black bummed-rock; each beat of the heart dissolving in the vat of acid the stomach had become; I looked at the thick black line of texta the cliff was, behind the trees, against the charcoal canvas of the sky milk smeared with stars remembering from daylight its’ sheer, smooth, unclimability ( and that’s not counting how deep the creek was) it looked deep, had that greeny still of deep waxed upon its’ surface; the fire shuffed and shifted the shadows about like over-packed blackness in a washing machine, and as if in a sort of dream he saw two longnesses within it diverge; the definite and deliberate movement of two legs from together to akimbo; of one stepping forward; then that gut churning crack of a branch maybe the diameter of a ten cent piece; from rock to rock he tiptoe danced, bluey-green (that fuzz on them) with those little pools of conical black encrustations like choc buds in a teacup, the jellious ripple-edged pasta of seaweed too, and the rocks getting slimier, hopping toward that seething fizz and sizzle of the breakers; mind now lad! Akela called from the car park (back still where there were pine trees) a matchstick now, with a little gut and hat; it was the sound he craved (and all that bright and magnificent spray) to stand eagle-footed within, and so sure of it the small jump seemed nothing until it pummelled against his shoulders; like a dick into the arse of the earth he slid; wedged halfway between the sky and the sea; feet dangling like calves stuck in the belly of the rock with his shoulders concertinaed into its’ V-shaped snug like a starling stuck in the frozen scrum of a rugby game; the sea sucked out then rushed a dazzle of bubbly stars about his face; receded and repeated; and seeming to get longer each time; he knew he could hold his breath for a minute ( at a pinch) had proved it just to entertain himself during maths lessons, but the water didn’t wait for him to properly fill his lungs, just rushed up savage as the face that would kill him without even knowing his name; and it was the complete unacceptability of this; his whole being in shock even as he saw the headline Boy Drowns drawn upon his flesh, like shark attack, as some kind of editorial destined for someone else into which he been so outrageously substituted that found him removing from its’ sheath the bone-handled blade upon his belt fetished sharp enough to feel hairy under the thumb, and standing, slowly, with his eyes fixed upon those just moved shadows; each breath was ethanol now, and I swooned, light-headed, leant forward from my still sat legs like a half-drunk gorgon, when my fingers touched a fist-sized branch (supposed for burning) and gripped it while I was away, already swimming and clamouring over the boulders on the other side of the creek when Adam’s eyes met mine, with a slight but unmistakable smile burrowed into the shadows of his cheek; he shook his head slightly, so I dropped the wood, and sat back with a crocheted blanket over my legs, and a bowl of cloggy oats on the plastic-flowered table-mat; withered now, as the tatty curtains, and telling the nurse again that the Prime Minister was a paedophile and that my pee tastes like lemonade; O just finish your brekky Mr she chides with the chortle of the exhausted, flicking my hand away from her bottom, and left alone looked out the window at the gleaming foil of a windswept chip packet car-crashed around a clump of weeds in the concrete; Ferrari; why does that word mean something? sounds like a spotted hunter or some terrible wind; unsettles me, the not knowing, so I fart some thick bean from my near useless arsehole; Prometheus; Agamemnon; Aegeus; Persephone; flower names? I never planted them! saw neat trimmed piles of Merlot clippings lined up in all their silvery purple gorgeousness like the knees of exotic schoolgirls on the lush green skirts of grass between the vines, the sky too, spread out like the grey cotton-bobbled bottom of a bed sheet with the embers of some giant cigarette bleeding in the fissures; the ghosts of television, haunting and frantic, heaped up in a frenzy of pixels like ants devouring a log; and from this static mist they emerged (somewhere between M*A*S*H and The Price Is Right) converging like a handclap on the outskirts of illumination; I will gut this cunt like a fish Adam thought, advancing with the knife brandished above his head, the mechanics of his emotion over-ruling the practical necessity of coming from below to effectively achieve this, overwhelmed by an urgent gravity to overpower and reign down upon his foe; to smite from above, and be as like a comet or a bull or a speeding freight train; Thor’s hammer and Excalibur combined not in that well-maintained but still average steel flashing through the darkness ( that had been used, actually, to gut fish (( and that slight sadness, the way they deflate, when the point punctures them)) and shave the sappy crowns of the nettles away from the nutty edible disk at their centre) but in the energy of enemies realised in the forward convulsion of oyster-clean and electroplated young muscle; Saladin sipped his minted tea; before him the prisoner (a bag of bones, in Templar smock) dragged a broadsword erect, as though to pierce the very heart of the sky, which wavered, falteringly, before collapsing like a railway pier still clasped in his skun-knuckled hand; the Sultan unplaced from him his weapon as though it were liquorice and, ensuring he was re-plumped, presented to his refreshment the carcass of a goat and a silk pillow, hanging from a cedar; take back your sword, he said, and cut asunder both these two to be free again; the Knight drew back and swung his trusted justice through the body of the goat as though slicing over a fairway with a nine-iron, with the putter of dripping blood from the ribs onto the severed hindquarters applauding his effort; next he positioned himself for the pillow, and swung at it as though it were the neck of the Sultan himself crying Sigillum Militum Χρisti (in his mind) yet the thing just bouncing off the blade like a miss-hit piñata; seems you will be with us some time yet! the Sultan grinned, glancing by the silk with a nick of his scimitar that left feathers blowing over the sand; like moonbeams now, dropped through the skylight to congeal in a mawkish swamp of green-tinged effulgence on the concrete; Polyphenum (fiddling with an outboard motor) approached from behind by Odysseus; pass us those pliers the monster said, holding out his hand, not bothering to turn around; I could just cave in his head now he thought, looking at the hammer handle turned his way on the workbench; I said pass us those fukn pliers! Claudius and Hamlet (with Gertrude peeling carrots in the kitchen) and Polonius the caged cockie whistling on about the wages of unfaithfulness like a broken record; and how sweet it was to see his tormentor’s confidant nibble ( with its’ gray beak and acorn bead tongue) a sunflower seed just plucked from the eye of his dick; to piss upon the handles of his car and golf clubs and favourite tools; and running now (screaming like a Banshee) towards that shape in the hinterland of the see-able, the knife ready to strike; Fukn Jesus! a voice cried from the epicentre, the treble of it slapping off the rocks; you right there mate! it was the moustache I saw first, dragging the hangdog features behind it (into the light) then the moonstone of his eyes, all glittery with rushed blood; and laughing now, shaking his head, reaching for a cigarette; thought I’d come see how you blokes were gettn on Bagheera winced (lighting it) and this one bloody tries to kill me! slapping Adam on the back, who pulled away from his clasp like a pushed bag of potatoes; soon they’ll sew my arse shut and put a pipe in me like a vacuum cleaner; the days are for dozing in the common room (in my favourite chair) before the wall-mounted plasma screen donated by Old Nanny Parson’s relatives; ha! I could tell you a thing or two about her! Champion in the two hundred butterfly my arse! she’s a honky tonk succubus! her teeth, see, infested with white ant, shocking, you’d see ‘em in her shit if they let you...the power-grid of the whole Eastern sea board run from her toenails (shhh) I’m not supposed to know; I miss the old TV, the static and the flickering grain; it’s not supposed to be alive; not like this new thing, it’s too rich and flat, too unreflective..."

“Shannon Hayes was born in 1968 in the Northern suburbs of Adelaide. After dropping out of drama school, he found employment; first as a camera salesman, then as a cook, which led to a good portion of dissolute and listless wanderings through various share-houses, half-way houses, pubs and backpacker hostels dotting the Western side of Australia. In 2001 he arrived in Melbourne—where he still resides—after being accepted into the Professional Writing and Editing Diploma program at RMIT.”

Seven Poems from Kai Laursen.

CAFÉ COYOTE.

This poem does not begin with a feeling-tone or image. This poem begins by chance at the Café Coyote. You wearing a buffalo skin robe, me in a blue tuxedo. The band plays a slow peyote song and the little people dance. I look you in the eye and say: honey, you look familiar. You laugh and pull your hair back in a ponytail. We speak in a secret language. We trade eyes. I place my hand on the small of your back. The moon takes a detour and makes love to the sun.


HIDDEN LAKE.

The sign said trespassers will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. I open the iron-gate and walk down a path to the water’s edge. White geese float on the surface of the lake. A man with a gun approaches and shoots himself in the mouth. The geese take flight, crying and beating their wings. I pretend not to notice the dead stranger. An old woman walks toward me and asks: what is your name? She waits a long time but I say nothing. The geese return to the lake and I walk home.


UP THE SEPIK RIVER: NEW GUINEA.

Tall and gabled the spirit house rises from a pole foundation. A grotesque mask guards the entry. Totems hang from the rafters. Beneath the house an old man carves and paints. He stretches crocodile skin over the head of a drum.

Evenings the men sat in a circle, chewed beetle nut, and told stories.

The first people are carved from a tree. And float downriver on the back of Crocodile. Two brothers begin to quarrel. Who shall be the big man?

One brother has only fruit to eat. The other eats meat. The former spies on the latter and sees him enter the side of a hill, which opens at his command. Then closes behind him. Later he emerges with a wallaby and two scrub hens. The foolish brother tries to do the same. He is too slow and all the animals escape. The brothers begin to fight. But their wives separate them and send them away to fight an ogre.


THREE MEMORIES.

Three gods appear in a scotch broom blossom: one stoic, one Saturn, one axe turning. Leveled, the picador’s horse is leveled. I hear the drum of death—a quickened heartbeat—and learn from its sweetness. In the dream I rob a jewelry store.

CURFEW.

We majored in brooms, as if some bank would redeem the industry
by reporting its email slurs (what some would call poetry) to the first
woman in San Francisco to wear a crew cut, all that at a time when
Curious George was almost famous, he did not seek the limelight,
it came as a result of many arrests made in Northern Italy and Sicily,
(a gecko barks in agreement), you could go on like this all day, but
then who would design the increasingly smaller studio apartments.


BLACK BUTTE FLYING SAUCER TRANSMISSION.

I TELL YA GOOD BUDDY WE GOT BRIGHT LIGHTS BEAMING DOWN IN ALL DIRECTIONS AND HEADLINES ABOUT FLYING SAUCERS IN PHOTOSHOP CLASS I’M PERFECTLY WILLING TO BELIEVE IN FLYING SAUCERS BECAUSE I HEAR THEM RAVE AT THE CLUB WITH SHORT SKIRTS AND GREEN TIGHTS THEY ARE BECOMING PSYCHEDELIC POSTERS WE DONT KNOW THE FUTURE WE KNOW THE FUTURE HEAVY CLOUDS BUILDING A STRETCH OF RAIN LATER HE SAID IN AN ENGLISH ACCENT BLOODY HELL A TIGHT GAME SHE ONLY CONCEDED TWO POINTS ALL AFTERNOON IT REALLY CARRIED MUCH TO CLOSE SHE REALLY GOT A HOLD OF THAT ONE THE RUNWAY SIX AND OVER BIRDS CHIRPING IN THE BACKGROUND GIVEN IT WASN’T A CLEAN BREAK IN THE END THE BOUGHS HAD COME OFF STILL WELL DOWN THE PITCH AND LOOKING DOWN THE HEATHER LOVELY SHOT AGAIN WE HAVE TO MAKE ROOM FOR IT YES THAT WAS A REAL CROWD PLEASER THE POWER WENT OUT IN AGREEMENT.


WRITING ON THE BODY.

desire the tension between the seen and the unseen the real and the hyper-real and chance itself a current pushing and pulling she made coffee at noon but the room was doomed by snow falling in the himalayas if you see trouble cross the street a flower arrangement the dictionary her bible and the new sentence same as the old sentence a row of stitching on the outer or upper side of a garment near the seam a riot ornithology a sign used to indicate peaceful intentions made by holding the palm upright and outward and forming a v with the middle and index fingers one betrayal is enough in my book what does the wall symbolize track your dreams to speak or say something rapidly oranges allowing a feeling to grow and deepen usually hanging upside down on a tree trunk as it works its way down eating insects seeds and nuts the blurry iris beneath the flickering lid


“Kai Laursen was born and raised in Seattle. He earned an MFA in Writing from California College of the Arts. Currently he lives in Bali.”