Map reading

Spacious latitude cuts spheres in swathes
of land and sea, a pattern in the chaos—
in mean time, downright cruel time
at that meridian point where in oceans
the date line turns its tide and waves,
I find that I am lost

You aboard ships, in love,
under wraps, out in all weathers,
prepositional to all of life
reading classics in your down time
while I learn alphabets, sums, and
how to navigate the globe of fathers’ furies
my compass spinning madly searching—

I found you, once, magnetic north
Only, what? forty years since,
a mere rill, a mote of time on
the telescope’s ground lens.
I hear the breaking down of engines,
distant grinding, pitch and roll
and other circumventions,
the deep doldrumming fester,
no breath of wind, not mine, nor yours,
silent in the still.

Without exactitude
there’s no way to find you—
those hours, degrees, minutes, seconds, lost.
You in latitudes unknown
where purposes cross
and no signal can be heard
through all the dross, precision
has turned woolly, fugged, untrue

I cannot read the signs of wind,
weathervane, not compass points,
nor the stars, and no charts guide me—
I find I am forlorn, for I am lost

Between the Lines

When I read between
The lines on your brow
I feel the shells splinter
And I know what is to come

I catch words in my mouth
That could be embers
In your gasoline eye
And napalm grip

I read the book of your body
Decipher tiny tells
Jot down tones and tremors
Because I know what is to come

You make a net from my words
Entrap my truths
And make them tigers
Camouflaged and treacherous

The earth starts shaking
Breaking under foot
A flipped chair, a flying fist

Cracking white walls
Snapping white bone
Blood blooms under skin
I knew this was coming

My tears on your paper brain
Book snaps shut, spell is lifted
Machetes through jungle paranoia
There are no tigers here

The pages flutter open
Your book now a variation
Of promises and regrets
Never ever, ever, ever again

And I read between your words
Between oaths soothing and sweet
Between the lines on your repenting brow
And I know what is to come

Libby Parke is a visual artist and poet based in the Gympie Region of Queensland. Holding a Bachelor of Arts in Ancient History, Libby incorporates her knowledge of mythology into her writing and art practice. Her observations of nature, humanity and patterns throughout history are reflected in her creative works.

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Chlorine

in the changing rooms, what are you? you, wet and warm in muscle, you open-eared behind

cubicles, finally safe from aqua profunda and a fear of limbs seizing and drowning, dialling for more hot water from the shower timer.

it’s a slow collapse into the steam

or maybe it’s as simple as the pleasure of skin and the taste of tap water

or how breasts compare by the lockers the way they dive from chests.

in the changing rooms, what are you doing? looking through mirrors

unpacking infinite thighs the reflection of your body

loosening like segments pulled from an orange.

dipping body, a heron-head pulling up knickers over knees, rolls of belly fat pressed into legs

it is OK to admire how you are always a new type of fish, a vertebrate with a

broken neck when damp and slipping into jeans

To be invisible, bliss. Slicking a still wet finger along clavicle like gathering sugar

twisting hair above the nape your bones, the big bang

in new clothes, mirror mist.

Origin

Earworms of Road to Gundagai and Qantas advertising

make something snort within my gut, and retch

in that cultural cringing way you get in piazzas of Naples

when you hear the accent cut through air like chemtrails on blue sky,

Barbecue sauce for the pizza, mate? Or when in Turkish towns

a grieving young man takes umbrage at history and sings, loud

and tuneless, that other Waltzing Matilda, about being shot

to hell, and camera-clad blokes take him aside and say

Not on mate and the young man cries

about his great-grandad, though the Turkish guide is gracious.

Long-time apologia for whiteness and no apology

to this invaded land of my birth and its beginning peoples,

only three of them at school. My friend Tarnie became

one helluva basketballer and she works in welfare now,

one was that boy who kissed me then left town with his parents

and played footy like a boss. But one ended up in gaol for murder

where she made art exhibits about loss for civic buildings,

as though that would make it all ok. They gave me something I saw again

in Alice and the Kimberley, Katherine and Adelaide, and Awabakal land

where I first heard a true name given. But I don’t know them.

My contemporaries were Guidos and Vitos

Marias and Annas and not so milky-white

I wasn’t a Karen or a Sharon or a Deborah or a Susan

like the other freckled girls with plaits of honeyed straw,

I was between those places of belonging and rack off,

familiar and foreign, native and alien, fitting in

and odd as a wrongfooted shoe. It’s not where I began.

If you ask a chemist in New Farm or a nail artist in Hawthorne

or a bank teller in Cottesloe or a tourist on the Opera House steps,

they’d likely say I look the part; I sound like I’m at home.

If you ask me, here, now, I’d say, but without aplomb,

Yeah, it’s my country—but it’s not where I’m from.

Urban Birdsong

One’s still asleep

the other pounding over Harbour Bridge

in his new Christmas runners.

I lean into right hip

the way the physio warned

was a bad habit and stare

into morning: gifted

like crinkled sheets

of tissue paper, unfolding

pale blue from open concertina doors.

A few optimistic fruit flies

hover over scraps spilt from the pedal bin.

Stretching squeal, screech

of trucks, train, and cars, distant

shout, honking horns, maybe a siren

but only me

before this open balcony.

Faint scent of Frangipanni

on the breeze softens last night’s remnants

of fried onion. A cabbage moth

meanders over trees

settles briefly on blossom and green

then floats across another canvas.

Yap of dog in nearby courtyard

traffic chopper

somewhere, a pneumatic drill

creak of upstairs floorboards

neighbour’s turning faucets, boiling water

beginning or ending things.

But it’s all out there

beyond doors, streets, clouds.

Glint and clatter simply background

to my solitary moments sipping tea

and breathing start of day.

From Small Beginnings

Beginning with the smallest sign, a tiny wisp that seems benign,

the embryo of devastation glows,

till embers stir to spread, ignite, as suddenly they flare alight,

to catch the scrub with vicious seeds it sows.

The smoky tendrils feed the flame determined to release and claim

surrounding vegetation parched by drought,

then in a trice the tussock burns as southern wind whips up and turns,

and panicked wildlife tries to struggle out.

For soon enough it breaks its ranks to make its mark and breach the banks

of riverbeds drained dry through constant sun,

and hurtling over baked terrain it infiltrates the blistered plain,

a ruthless monster freed and on the run.

The conflagration swiftly grows as southern wind whips up and blows;

the blaze seems filled with incandescent rage.

The undergrowth explodes and cracks, as standing on the dusty tracks,

we battle on determined to assuage.

We’ve stood to face such flames of hell – have felt their heat, inhaled their smell,

have witnessed mates succumb and breathe their last

while fighting wild frenetic beasts the devil’s aminions have released

and knowing rest won’t come until they’ve passed.

When finally the thunder’s heard and drops of rain mean hope is stirred,

we cheer, as far above the heavens quake.

As night falls on an eerie scene obscured by ash with sights obscene,

we count the cost of ruin in their wake.

A few weeks later, sweet relief as sprouting leaves help soothe our grief –

a new beginning bringing faith again.

Yet still we sometimes question why we do not listen and apply

more wisdom from our country’s native men.

Beginning in the smallest way, these fiery foes devour their prey,

deliver heights of horror none transcends.

We cannot underestimate their faculty to desolate…

for ultimate destruction’s how it ends.

Teacher

How late our lives have moored up side by side.

I, in my seventies, you, in your eighties;

a coming together of deep accord.

My world is suddenly richer

as the power of your giving

fires up ambition in me

I thought was dead.

As you present your wealth of gathered facts

to eager learners,

I watch and notice

rather than listen,

feel rather than hear,

marvel at the mystery

of such a small woman

holding so much knowledge,

such erudition.

You have declared me your assistant.

I am puffed with purpose as

layers of myself I thought depleted

have plumped up again.

In quiet times I think of you

presenting in your retro chic,

me carrying your equipment

to your car afterwards

as you munch on a biscuit

scooped up from the morning tea table

on your way out.

As I hug you

crumbs fall on my shirt front, and yours,

and this slender new alliance

hums with potential.

The Field

Once I stood in a field very far from the city and said –

Your will, not mine

as if I was a believer.

The sun beamed down with its strong, almost blinding light.

I felt it on my back, stroking me,

then enveloping me

like a blanket of dandelions and daisies so that I fell

to the ground, almost swooned

as if drunk or dazed, and into

a long deep sleep that lasted probably no more than a minute.

But when I woke, I’d let go,

I’d surrendered. I rose up

and knew I’d stopped fighting my fate. I was able to breathe,

all the tightness and tension had gone

as if someone had come and lifted it

from my shoulders, moved it through me to the grass and the ground,

through my feet, my fingers.

I walked back to the house

where we were staying, my family who’d brought me there

but who were somewhat like strangers.

I said nothing, of course, of what had happened

for my family are skeptical of anything that sounds close to God.

So I held the sense of peace

that had come over me

like a prayer, and returned to the city, resolved.

Mangoes & elephant bones

How do we make elephants bones our origin? We pluck them from basements between late night projections when we linger on the outskirts of friendships for decades. These are our museums, our artifacts. Singing Toto at the top of our lungs, so loud you miss the plane out of Melbourne. This despite, our blessing. How an email stuff-up becomes a hell yeah. See baby, I’m rushing out the door to buy us slurpies – thinking, which leather couch would look better in our living room? Thinking, we’ll have to get rid of your double, or at least move it into the spare room. Thinking, how many candles is too many before we burn down the bedroom? Thinking, I couldn’t give a stuff who’s looking through our windows. Thinking, we’re tea-light-shadow-flickering – we’re the hotness of infrared. God, I’m loving a blister in its proximity to a memory. I want to light every candle until my thumbs bleed. Thinking, should I tell my dogs that you’re they’re new mumma? Thinking, Sydney would be different, this time – wouldn’t it? We’d have art hanging from our ceilings, gold vases for houseplants & velvet sheets for slick bodies. Our life: dinner parties so lush they’d call us living terrariums. See how we grow inside of one another, perpetually. Just two rubber duckies bruising on the dance floor – all black-clad like the locals, we’re smirking, tonight, through flash point – the fem-punk trio hurling, don’t call me a good girl. Like you, I’d be anything you want me to be. I’m slipping off this David Beckham bad cologne and manifesting a thousand film essays just to see you. See, how I’ve fallen for a lacklustre hotel room & and even an old housemate saying he’ll stab everybody, cause its kill or be killed. All these places, all these pieces – they’re our details. Our origins. Our late night museums, polished statues, our scriptures – no state line between us. Our memories, mutually domestic. On the street, I want to pin you against brick and suck the dry ice off your nipples, fresh as mango. Always, our home is right here, but a bed is never as convenient. Remember, how we cut those mangoes into pieces? Weren’t we homely? I want to hold that cut mango up – our golden lawn bowl, on the days before we knew – and see how its two halves make a whole. Make the shape of the moon in a space where stars didn’t fill.

Sacred Country

At a Goolmangar acreage on Wijabul/Wia-bul Country, a camphor-laurel

sun-faces. The sky’s lion speaks light day & night. Year-by-slow-year,

day-by-slow-day, growth rings seasonal stories about nearby trees – some

long-gone, some still present, all a community of devotion.

The owner, a carpenter, treads revolutions around the tree’s base.

Head bent in deference, his feet make maps on Country

& intuits camphora secrets: a chair, stool & archway are companions

& have waited eons to reach out & meet the gathered peoples.

He picks a ground-near branch as thick as three forearms

held together & as long as a cathedral spire. His fingers

circle the axe’s handle as questions of angle, curve, slice

& weight are considered. He slants the tool; it glints

the morning air. A deep cut reveals honey-rich hardwood.

Mystery guides this shaper’s fingers. A hand-plane back-pares

roughness; nails sing the hammer’s down-swing.

Timber glows in stacks on the work bench. Inside each length,

the grain beats & flows more than the tree has ever known.

This resonance laces new patterns, new stories to tell,

legends that bind earthly matters to those not of this world.

The wood-carver arranges a steam box: a cooking-pot with a coat-

hanger across the inside. These wires elevate the wood as the steam

of change bends the lengths to archway curves. Later the beams,

plinth & other pieces are blocked together as one deified piece.

In the church, the woodworker & others install the archway,

hammer in the final cogs. A bow of light, deities, devotees

& devils enter this building on Sacred Country.

All this gathered wood resonates with the great old stories

too – every action, every utterance a benediction.

Dust motes like half-remembered sins float the yellow air.

Also a passage of departure, the deities & devotees leave,

but fallen angels, even with wings folded tight,

cannot. For now, they’ll pray in silence.

Will recollecting this knowledge from their ancient

ways activate reverence on Sacred Country?

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