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Ann Iverson Ann Iverson
Australasian Poetry in our Time:-
Poem By Julia Allen (NZ)
Photograph of Kirsty
(Aged seven)
Suddenly
It’s all there: the impossible
Sunlight
You glimpse
An impression of
Your daughter
In her strawberry shortcake dress
Blond curls
And bare feet
Laughing
(
More poems by Julia Allen )
A Poem by
Bonita Cartwright
Song
Soft grass beneath me,
Green, growing, living, dying.
Perfect sky. Wisps of cloud,
Drifting, shifting, melting, moving,
Changing…
Breath - going in, going out.
Blood - warm, pulsing.
Eyes closed, motionless on the world
I sit, embracing life -
Listening.
Through the sweet silence come
Soft sounds, indefinable -
Soft sighs, voices indistinct-
Laughing, crying,
Reaching out through time’s frail web,
Whispering, confiding.
Above the roar of life, insistent, unremitting
Comes the opus.
Softly starts; swells, surges
Voices, soaring! Listen!
I am drawn into the maelstrom.
They will not let me go.
I am lost.
What is this cant that draws me to another plane,
The melody of a life not mine,
Lived where I have not been?
Pictures, filling me. Other minds, bleeding into me.
My heart begins to beat the rhythm of another’s life.
My voice sings another’s song.
Do you feel me? Will you tell your song to me?
Bemused, I listen.
Inspired, I speak.
My voice is clear and strong,
Wiser for communion.
Breathe into me.
Speak, and I will speak,
Lend me your voice and I will sing.
(More
poems by Bonita Cartwright)
A Poem by Rangi Faith (NZ)
The spirit of greenstone & the Dutch school of painting
meet in the Otira Gorge
On opposite sides
of a flooded valley
men looking for a way
to cross the black water
watch each other
in the lightning;
against the bituminous clouds
the silhouette of a man
draped in flax
stands on a rock
he carries a stone
wet from the rain.
(More Poems by Rangi Faith )
A Poem by Jeffrey Paparoa Holman (NZ)
Dropsy
A styrene lid for take away coffee fumbled
Twice: Nanny's genes. Osteoarthritis.
Knuckling down. Spilt milk. Tears for my Dad's lost
War, and bitterness. This autumn I don't
Just kick the leaves; I bathe my weary fins in
Bronze, and leap like a tired old fish. Another
Dam, another river. What’s burst in me,
Fingers fumbling, heart on fire: an army
On the run, I cast off weapons, hatred,
Fear of you, and all the shields that dragged me
Down. Here on campus I watch the young bear
Burdens: lonely loves of self, the will to
Win. I know what can’t be said, and I kick
My heels laugh and pray to the season’s wind.
(More
Poems by Jeffrey Paparoa Holman (NZ))
A
Poem
by
Gary Langford
Zoo
Animals roam insurance offices,
Biting the legs of bemused typists,
And raising cubs by the water cooler.
Cars are confined to the local Museum.
Horses gallop into the Square,
Stamping in the Radiant air.
Deer travel miles on lifts
In order to catch a glimpse of the sea,
Taking photos to show the deer back home.
A shortsighted cat eats a man by mistake,
Finding him to his taste.
Soon the craze spreads through the entire race.
The survivors are given a building to live in,
Sightseers throw them pieces of meat
For screaming and jumping through hoops.
Unfortunately, captivity disturbs the species.
One by one they slowly die.
Such a pity the animals cry.
Published in Four Ships
( More
poems by Gary Langford)
A Poem by Bill Manhire
THE PRAYER
1
What do you take
away with you?
Here is the rain,
a second-hand miracle,
collapsing out of Heaven.
It is the language of
earth, lacking an audience,
but blessing the air.
What light it brings
with it, how far
it is.
*
I stayed a minute
& the garden
was full of voices.
2
I am tired again
while you are crossing
the river, on a bridge
six inches under water.
Small trees grow out of
the planks & shade the water.
Likewise, you are full of
good intentions
& shade the trees with your body.
3
Lord, Lord
in my favourite religion
You would have to be
a succession of dreams.
In each of them
I’d fall asleep,
scarred like a
rainbow, no doubt,
kissing the visible bone.
( More
poems by Bill Manhire)
A
Poem by
Carol-Anne Stewart
If I Had a Gun
I'd shoot my father
even though he's dead
I'd shoot my mother
every time she said
no marriage is easy
I'd shoot the guy
who smashed my car
and gave my daughter brain damage
I'd shoot every kid at school
who called me a wog
I'd shoot my sister
every time she said
you're so lucky to study
I'd shoot the horrible little grubs
that keep eating my plants
I'd shoot the people who stare
because my daughter is different
I'd shoot Tuesday mornings
and anyone who says
why study at your age
I'd shoot Pauline Hanson
just for the heck of it
I'd shoot all answering machines
and anything electronic
I'd shoot nearly all the white in Africa
and let them start again
If I had a gun
I'd probably shoot myself
( More poems by Carol-Anne Stewart
)
A Poem by
Roger Vickery
AMOR VINCIT OMNIA
You ask me - will you love me
now I'm old? .
Like a general adrift in the sandbags
you've turned to the defeated
for proof of your power.
My darling, at the best of our time,
I merely lived in the shadow
of your Atlas eye.
No matter how many nights you allowed me
climbing rights
through your warm trenches
by morning I was always
in no-man's land, crawling
through stakes of flowers, arsenic perfumes.
Although I'm no more than a lance-sore windmill
perhaps I can help to scare
your fears.
You will never age, my darling,
No matter how many years you bump and grind
in the x-ray beacons of the bonny striptease.
You will always strut
the Mannequin Sybil.
The apple was just a juicy toothpick.
You were an incubus of holy flesh,
even in the cradle rib.
You have always been old
all ways.
Every new God
feeling your aboriginal palms about his loins
cries out
You are the resurrection
babe.
(More
poems by Roger Vickery)
A Poem by
VERNICE WINEERA
Wellington, Circa 1950
The winds were always there,
the southerly, up from Antarctica,
baring teeth that tore your clothes,
hair, skin, even flesh from off your ribs
then licked your bones
with that infinitely cold tongue.
And sometimes the northerly,
no less cruel, snarling down the gorges
north of the pa, clawing branches
off the eucalyptus trees, roofs
from wooden houses, frail, every nail
creaking in the onslaught.
Then we’d hate to go outside
for more wood, the few lumps
of coal you bought with shillings
kept safe within your coin purse.
Someone had to though,
and I avoided the guilt of seeing you
trussed in that thin overcoat
in the brute wind, the flimsy scarf
whipping about your gray hair,
the axe ever poised in the air
as you fought to let it drop
against the wet logs
on the chopping block.
So I’d go, stepping beyond
the slamming of the time-lock door
into the animal day,
the whole world writhing,
snakes in the trees,
dogs howling down the sky,
the picket fence rocking, possessed
of something terrible, unseen.
Then the empty rooms of that house,
damp with their view of the gray sea,
the bleak sky, became
the only womb of warmth left
for a fifteen-year-old adrift in a storm,
a grandmother’s fading year
the sole companion.
(More
Poems by VERNICE WINEERA)
Michelle Mateer
quiet by the swamp
they held their hands over their mouths
staring at the stretch of heavy water
what can be said has been said before
strokes of light like a parrot's eye
when photos are turned, nothing is turned
back to the insulation of sweetness
frogs gather near, croaking, then quiet
lovers smile through their hands
there is a simple rule when little works
avoid the heavy sting of blame
come away spinning through the fading air
all is over in the quiet by the swamp
( More
Poems by Michelle Mateer)
A Poem by Sean McCarthy
Child
Flicking through a role of film
seeing negatives of a small boy
playing marbles
amongst the clover
looking for four leaves
of a book that is read
by an adolescent
bruised and bloody from a school yard blue
sky behind a thunderstorm cloud
that rains on him
and nobody hears his cry
of the pain of a teenager
who has just been raped
do not become a smouldering stump
smoking the green
tiles of a police station
that houses him after his arrest
that he needs after rattling down
a knife-lost Molonglo River
of tears that the young adult
spills like wine
when Amanda's breath gets taken away
by a ventilator that doesn't work
to hide the needle-stick marks
a dragon worn sleeve on the shirt
of a just married dad
who lost the gift
before he opened it
a ceremony
under the trees
that lied
looking at stars
on the day the divorce was final
just me and you are the same
person who finds
the time to head a poem to the child
head on a pillow
an adult who stands on a hill
picking the clover for four leaves
of a book that reads
like a novel only better
because this one is real
only the power of words hides the fact
that on the hill I see
so many years ago
that little boy
in the coffee coloured basket
through worn eyes
published when I looked
at the dreams of a child
( Meet the poet -next page )
A Poem by Karen O’Brien
Two Hands
That hand
Yes
That hand
Your hand
SAT
On my ticker
Inside my body
And did not move
With the first yawn
Of the rooster
Or when the body dressed and left
But waited
And still
WAITS
For the hand to wind the clock
( More Poems by Karen O’Brien)
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