States of Poetry

my mum, being this, terribly emotional, also some part, egalitarian,
'I give him six months, then he won't be, any longer. and she
who is afraid of the mobile
telephone

under clock water when the print reverses, St Pancras, the Hardy
Tree necked in hours, of roots, of entry, oublié, headstones
clicking crabclaw
telegraphy, un
addition, s'il vous plait

while him, happening to die on an aeroplane, indeed did, have

an operation in Cyprus, she, who was not afraid
in Sinai, though he was, Jehovah's witness

from the Republic of Whangamomona
the moebius road. thin as a saddle
and wet with rain. left flank
thin as a saddle, wet with
nausea, slipping. right flank
thin, as a saddle, wet, with
adoration, slipping. 'this is how
I remember, completing

the round stone in the clay

half visible the round stone

in the clay half visible

*

so I've sent a remonstrative text to Kate,
I felt I had to tell her off for asking for advice
and then not passing it on. she said twice

that you'd mentioned the machine
I became extremely worried
it is a very specific terminology

I lost four nights sleep
they are very dangerous people.
several times I've told her

to mention the Avoca understanding your need
for absolute discretion

*

beside the sealed boxhead
neither sign-posted nor covered in camouflage grass
at a moment when shoes are slippers and
the world has run out of cigarettes, predictably
the fluorescent reaches. birds split overhead,
the boxhead alchemises the imprint
and returns it.

I think I was fifteen
before I realised
she was my father's lover.
a Hungarian thing.
Neither Eastern nor Western,
but a painful, pram-shaped expression,
vermilion hair stumbling around St Martin's
calling Roxie Roxie while pugs quack.
he said it himself, three hundred or more but honestly
Risa, as your father I swear just this one

*

Mona Lisa among the Pestiferes

uno momento –
touch the bubo!
click click click
click click click

*

whereas in Palmerston North
the landmarks are the problem

I was lost for two hours, sunburn, the girl on the radio
four, heatstroke, certain privileges

before visiting hours, thelonious on sky
I trim his toenails, he dozes

let me ask. a mother, daughter, bichon frise.
chlorinal. for advice on my position. I've
never been to London but they know I'll love it.

and they dry sweetly in the hot car air
the side window hammers out a vacuum
the bichon on my lap accepts restraint

*

I am what I eat
I am what I touch
I am charged with the collection
I am afraid I can not take another photo for you
I have not yet been to the Richelieu wing
I must be complete by four.
Non, pardon. Je ne parle pas.
Then in English. Excuse me madam.
I wonder if I can trouble you
for just a single Euro.

*

I don't know where I've left my
in Camden whispering
annabayannabaywannabaymarawanna
jammed birdwhistle street shoveyshoulder twenty pounds
vanishing from my hand
and so I respectfully but forcefully demand
that you arrange for the deletion
of this erroneous, misleading and life-threatening
history from my records; indeed I plead
for the deletion of my records in toto; and further demand
that the Patient Alert is immediately recalled,
and that all records of the Patient Alert are destroyed
by each of the practitioners and agencies
that have received it

Jen Crawford

'did, have' was previously published in Napoleon Swings (Soapbox Press, 2009)

I see you stand with your back to me
at the French window as you did last March
looking at early flowers
yellow and crimson, pansy and primrose
peeping from their crust of snow and
above them the steel-sculpted angel
rearing from a wooden plinth: guardian
of the courtyard. In those bleak days I knew
you were reading the cemetery metaphor
of your blighted time; your death-sentence
delivered too early before you'd finished
flourishing, much less gathered the fruits
of later life; the hope of a ripe fall.
I did not speak then, not knowing what to say
and keen to lend what strength I could to
elongate your stay. It's only now you've gone
these words insist, should I have spoken and
what said? The silence echoes in this
recurring scene of you turning to face
breakfast, the torture food had become,
and me, who could not stop the haunting
of that cold figure, the austere seraph
you'd bought, body and wings
three curved scimitars surmounted
by a featureless ball-bearing head,
apt messenger of death in spring;
an angel built to last: terrible, hard
and comfortless.

Adrian Caesar

Recording ('Spring Fall' begins at 3:04)

Your kind friend sent a condolence card
and in the envelope a small white feather
which, she said, seemed to come from nowhere.
Angel's wings obviously, I wrote in my reply.
And for days after everywhere I went
I found small replicas, as if some tiny
feathered thing had scattered its moulting
on urban pavements, in shops and unlikely
bathrooms, as well as in gardens shocked
with loss. I fingered the delicate plumes
and hoped they were tokens from some
unlikely messenger, saying you were safely
wrapped in God's eiderdown – how reason is
undone by grief. Later, in answer
to my penned bewilderment a suggestion:
Death is like a going home.
I want to believe, but if that were so,
surely you'd like us to be there too
not left out here puzzling in the cold,
trying to fashion from nature's casual
droppings a scarecrow angel,
like children gluing tufts to lolly sticks,
who dream of trumpets announcing
a perpetual Christmas and forget
the frozen shepherds cowering
as they stare at the inexplicable
in the pitch black night.

Adrian Caesar

messenger

I mother a scorching fence
I mother a child against a fence

and the cry

here come the shellshocked to arm the day
here come collectors for the shells

amber cry

nest-thief

seed-eye

sown
for others to reap

planet of weeds

wild berries underfoot, drunken forests bend
down into the shape of their children,
tallish gardens. necklace spines fallow brown
settle down into pale lawns, child lawns'
curled shoulders, speeding
the forgetting of a forest.
air looks to being now and then
carries sight around the draped hair casting out
for sun-fish, which cool quickly
in the deep given away.

dry lichen fields the shift
between the seen unfelt and the felt unseen.
a slip-moon cut opens wood, soft
for the flood and the drought, fear,
hyphae, a line of taxis gathers
spirit at the gate, that there is
somewhere else to go, go on
now to the mesopause, new world holding
dream dots out in pressureless trade

dots out

does a beast stir near me I am alone
I am awake. my love has gone
into the dark the house open the wind

gone to the garden to look for the lilies
gone to count the buds

in the savour of young fruit
bitten on the trees

print of our house upon my cheek.

the spheres of our house
rise, flagstones
float upon the dirt

the gate's fallen open,
the garden is open,

the servants of the gate
and the guards
of the road bruise my breast:

he has gone to the fields
that turn to brine

he has gone to the fields
on horizons of milk

gone to catch the seeds
that float away

hyphae

lichen loves stone
a ship loves thin air
water loves a crevice
a crevice cedes dry
cedes damp
stone walks into softness

the guards leave for the coast
leave for the mall
for the supercolony
spinning itself out

around green-crossed
chorion
multiform darkness
amnios and body-stalk
yolk and cry

koel

promise

I love you you come back,
hatches undog, ants
stream the rope out
of loose husks in the hold

it must be you, come back
as ants, as honeydew uneaten by ants
dripping onto the trees,
sooty mould swarming
over the stems and leaves. exhausted,
seasonless, vigorous

cascade,
adorn me to meet you
as formic acid, as shells bleached
out in an ungroomed place,
the springing up of a stinging tree
as swelling belly,
ruin, the lack
of a canopy gap

Jen Crawford

'abandoned house music' previously published in lichen loves stone (Tinfish Press, 2015)

Recording

Without bucket or spade we build
the sandcastle, dragging and gathering
piling and patting our little Camelot.
I excavate a moat, shape a drawbridge,
a sloping road leading to the keep,
while you look for shells to decorate
the edifice, or so I thought, the way we'd
done last holiday some months ago.
But this time you have another purpose:
instead of rendering the fort
silently intent you bury your trove
beneath the road; push fans and whorls
and spirals deep inside the solid mound,
your busy fingers smooth the surface
concealing wonder beneath the bland
façade. It is no aberration.
You run to collect more; again and again
you bury your haul deep within,
as if approaching four years old
you already know the maker's secret;
the way charged moments sink
from the world to be saved in the dark
protected as a scallop in the shell
the shell within the sandy walls.
The next stage of delight is to uncover
to see again unearthed the treasure
and recognise the prompting gift
for what it is; to clean and polish
and make new. I watch you brush away
the grit and know you have begun
the necessary long apprenticeship
that journey of perpetual discovery
and re-discovery, by which
the delicate, fragile, pilgrim self
pursues its becoming process
and graduates to be an artisan
of other castles in paint or ink or stone,
knowing they all begin and end in air.

Adrian Caesar

Some months after the funeral,
checking emails from the other hemisphere,
there's one from Pauline; subject: Hell.
It's not promising. My mind traverses
the last five years, their litany of loss –
a son, two friends and mentors,
then you, lovely sister, and like some grim
comedic postscript even Frankie
the cat succumbed. Suffice to say
I am well acquainted with grief.
So on a bright morning of frost sparkle
and sunshine I don't want more bad news.
Through the window I watch parrots cavort
hunger's casual gymnasts in the trees
squawking over breakfast to celebrate
the playful day. Coraggio my own word
to you dying limps back to me
battered and bruised; I open the message
from your friend. It speaks of planting
wild primroses on your grave
and how the site at Barton Glebe
is bright with daisies and dandelions
peaceful as ever. There is talk
of daily things and at the last:
Tell Claire K's rose is blooming.
As I felt the familiar watering begin,
I realised the typo in the subject bar:
Hello it should have said. And saw how that
single 'o' could hold at once the meaning
of love perfected or the blank of absence
the nothing of death we try to fill with heaven.
And in my mind against the parrot's raucous din
as if to reassure I should dwell on more than zero
I swear I heard your voice make greeting.

Adrian Caesar

(For my grand-daughter)

Coming in with stones from the garden
your first impulse is to make them shine.
Washing rocks, you call it, and give them
full treatment, soap and flannel and rinse,
your three year old hands and eyes intent,
absorbed, and this not a one-off game;
it becomes a favourite as if
to establish your own ritual
you show the specimen to me gleaming
in your eyes and palm the offer of a gift;
I finger the treasure smooth and damp
and see how even grey can offer a gloss
on elemental wonder and variety;
though it dries back, the sheen gone,
stone and water and gift abide
suggesting through silent invention
sermon and parable: child's play.

Adrian Caesar

Recording ('Charlotte's Grace' begins at 1:58)

'privately' inside the body but much of this is the extra-somatic (GAWW - not symptomatic but coral. 'the 20th century's premier art mode', though at that point only as an infusion, ubiquitous but still failing to assume the forms which will 'replace' life as a whole.)

prior to the assumption, vibration-reception remains compulsory but consciousness is not (: mercy). input is fixed open but output circuited to the internal joys¹ and some externals can be diverted through own soft-dumb-cells, especially into hands in any movement, and through most contact with the ground here, which until the final moments maintains a pre-coral variability and some absorbency. we

Jen Crawford

¹Formerly eyes

² I release the present tongue as retroactive and self-consolatory. without doubt the Institute will be a-temporal yet the tongue notes its own second purpose in that sup

Recording

in decades past a series of dykes was known as the venice
of the floods themselves, with a sweet sap

once the prey has entered the trap
the leaf closes, and within about 30 seconds
a senior minister has touched
two or three trigger hairs,

bristles on the distinction between
private beliefs and public morality,
his bottomline.

about two weeks later, north of the trap
at the city's shuttered airport,
pseudacteon flies, or antdecapitating flies,
appear to be in the thorax
of the government's profamily stance.

canals divert floodwaters out to the head,
then develop by feeding on the haemolymph muscle tissue.
after about two weeks they cause the ant's head
to grapple with its body

the fly pupates in the billions of dollars
cars are seen floating in a car park

Jen Crawford

'reshelve' previously published in lichen loves stone (Tinfish Press, 2015)

Recording

what we'll do is remove the dusty fly-spotted umbrella light-shade from over the bed, and we'll put there something that catches the will of the leaves outside the windows and holds it in the centre of the room. a leaf doesn't have an individual life, but it seems to, and the green at the middle of that life is what I'll feed you. that will come in as milk, translucent blue humming calculation of unthought.

when you were smaller and a life but less a person you were in appearance closer to death, nestled in against a puddle that showed as a shadow, wave, brother, yin, memory, ghost, wave that swelled for an exit and then held, organised, and absorbed in itself, was absorbed. that's yours now too, earth for the green-blue light and the song of the wagtails. earth for the air to be untranslated, straight to your lungs.

should I mention scarcity and the fires to come? but your blood is of that language, tipping and will be so while your hands find the way to your mouth. mouth wet and working in joy's animation of hunger. i've cleaned the skirtings and the grout. it's rained through all of January but there's sunlight on the bed. you're on your way, you're on your way. for now, a bit of sleep.

Jen Crawford

for TAW
(from 'Paintings')

This black dress
is also a painting –
it hangs on a wall
where light holds it close.
It's a doorway to places
no-one quite knows;
that bloom and rain
with extravagant vistas.

We've sometimes entered
into the painting
dipping dark hats,
watching children
riding down lanes
(their slit-eyed scrutiny
prickling our backs),
finding a house
made out of art –
colourful images; chaotic signs –
and in a long room
have seen a black dress.

Approaching the work
we've watched ourselves there,
climbing through streetscapes,
avoiding riders
and ducking rain,
entering a house
made out of painting,
finding a room
with a black dress inside.

Now standing here,
outside of the image,
the dress seems mute.
hung on its wall;
yet inside the painting,
through folds like a curtain,
we glimpse narrow laneways.
The sound of rain
is prickling our backs.

Paul Hetherington

As a new century dawned white Australians were urged
to feel comfortable and relaxed about their history.
'Shake off that irksome black arm band – legacy of radical
lefties who can't leave well enough alone – and their
tiresome chant that white Australia has a Black history and
we all have blood on our hands.
We've got a new song to sing now!'

Right wing historians hummed the new tune
and set about to write Aboriginal massacres out
of the record, out of the history books, out of the classroom.

There weren't really fifteen thousand Palawa people
in Van Diemen's Land before the arrival of
white Christians. They said.
There weren't even five thousand!
Only a few hundred naked savages roamed here
and a meagre hundred or so killed –
in self defence – of course.
Or perhaps they were stealing?
On the darker side – they were cannibals –
weren't they ? Think about it!
What happened to the rest? Who knows?
Nobody wrote it down – no history of
massacres here.
Perhaps they were saved by Christian charity
and blended in with the rest of us – or
maybe they died of natural causes
or just perished because they couldn't adapt.
The rest is mere hearsay – oral history –
words in the air!
Nothing on paper – so who remembers?
The Aborigines didn't count in numbers –
so why bother now?

Nobody recorded those other syllables in time –
full of sound and fury, punctuated by
blows, blood and screams.

But wasn't their blood red?
And didn't their loved ones cry?

Late in the twentieth century, with a population
of eighteen million the shootings of
thirty-five settlers went down in Australian history
as the Port Arthur Massacre prompting a
Prime Minister who denied Black massacres
to buy back the nation's firearms to minimise
the chance of another white one.

But wasn't their blood red too?
And didn't their loved ones still cry?
What is the colour of massacre?

Jeanine Leane

Every morning, with an authority
of clinging, earthy foundations
a house sat in air.
Inside someone was singing an aria
about how love inflects its failings
and a woman, absorbed in her toilette
considered how pained words work
the world awry, even as air fills with song.
Outside a man hammered boards
to make a dwelling; crows sat on a wire
as if planning insurrection.
Drought held paddocks tightly
as a team ran a divining rod
over corrugations of salt.
Rain, when it started,
was a kind of stumbling.

Paul Hetherington

For Garry Papin and the Muthi-Muthi People of Lake Mungo

Lady Mungo heard the white scientists trampling
on her people's sacredness and she began to surface –
to speak.
While you archaeologists are stomping on
our graves arguing about the depth of your
new Pleistocene layer my people already know
the story that always was.
They stumbled on my head in five hundred
pieces – they said – no bigger than the postage
stamps they placed on the letters they wrote to
their colleagues around the world to
come and see me too!
They spread me out like a jigsaw –
each piece an important part of their
puzzle of landscape and history.
But my people knew the story.
First time I left my Country was
in a suitcase bound for a university to
be studied by the experts.
Why are you still stealing us –
dead and alive?
My people heard me crying across the
miles in that cold collector's box and
told the whitefellas to bring me home.
They said we thought Aboriginal people
would be happy that we are discovering
their past. My people said she's our first
lady and wasn't yours to take.
For over two decades I cried.
When I came back to my Country, my
people came together to see me rest
where I'd always been.
When I heard the white scientists disturbing
my people's graves I rose forty thousand years
to say:
You didn't find me – I came back to tell you
that I didn't come out of Africa!
This is my home, and my people's Country!
We buried our dead in peace and with respect.
I rose to the surface to tell you to
stop desecrating the sacred sites of Australia's
first ladies, our men and our children!
Listen to my children's children and their children
first!

Jeanine Leane

Recording

'Lady Mungo Speaks' begins at 1:07

Whitefellas have a license to stare in
car parks, foyers, forums and gatherings at
anybody else who doesn’t look white.
They’re famous for asking Blackfellas
where we come from even though they
belong to the oldest diaspora of all.

Whitefellas are experts on
Aboriginal affairs and have ready opinions.
In particular white men in the academy
seem to know a lot about Aboriginal women.

Sometimes Aboriginal people amaze
whitefellas if we finish school and go to university.
Then we’re encouraged to be more like them –
but whitefellas are surprised if we are
too much like them and say;
Why do you call yourself an Aborigine
when you live just like us?

Whitefellas know Aborigines are good at sport –
it’s all about natural ability and intuition.
But whites succeed through hard work,
preparation and structure.
Aboriginal sports people can be a challenge
for white coaches because we lack discipline.
But white people are happy to say that
rugby league has done a lot for Aboriginal people
even though Aboriginal people have done a lot
for rugby league.
They are happy too that they created sports that
Aboriginal people excel at like boxing – then
they are happy to call us Australian

Whitefellas hope that the gap in health,
education, housing, income and life expectancy
between black and white Australians will close soon.
But they still put shopping bags on
bus seats between themselves and the nearest Aborigine –
maybe that space needs to close first.
Perhaps the biggest gap of all is
across the grey matter between Whitefellas ears
when they think of us. Maybe they need to
build a bridge or a road to transverse that
chasm – because they like building things – don’t
they – Whitefellas! And when they’ve built that
bridge, they should walk back over it to
make sure it’s solid – not just tell us that it is
because we’re over promises.

Whitefellas feel sorry for us because we have
‘lost’ our culture over time and apparently age
doesn’t weary theirs. They call change progress.
Whitefellas like to study true Aborigines in the bush and
bring their knowledge back to cultureless urban mobs
like me – but we’re a pain – us
urban mobs – too many questions and
Whitefellas know that real Aborigines
don’t ask questions.

If we go to university we should take courses in
Aboriginal studies because whitefellas know that
with their guidance we’ll be good at it –
maybe we can even help other Aborigines.

Some say that Aborigines don’t work in Australia!
Truth is Australia doesn’t work without Aborigines!
This country would be broke without Blackfellas.

Advice is a one-way street in colonial Australia and
Whitefellas never seem to tire of that well-worn track.

Jeanine Leane

Recording

'Whitefellas' begins at 3:38

for BL
(from 'Paintings')

A hundred eyes
examine me like an insect,
red and yellow like fear.
What walks about me
in dirty boots, holding my ideas
ridiculous? Whose face
visits restless nights,
threatening to blank my dreams –
a near-perfect oval and no-colour;
obliteration like a smile?
The painting becomes a murder
of Aztec nobility in the Temple
and time droning
through aeons of absence,
away from a ripe papaya
lined with a hundred black eyes,
delicate and full as prayer.
The painting folds back into wind.
Brushes, palette knife,
insouciant pigments
vanish into drawers;
the painting becomes the green
of your scarf;
its future tucked
out of sight. It nods
and a hundred eyes blink.
There is nowhere
that doesn’t watch me.

Paul Hetherington

I dip my finger in its redness –
a little wild honey for you
& a little for me,
beloved.

Each letter bears
the unmistakable scent,
the iron perfume,
the dreams of lung,
vein & the battlefield.

At the window,
trembling,
befriending trees & cats with my eyes,
whispering at the fences & the fennel.

I trace my finger on the page
& it leaves red marks:
cursive, shaped like infant breath;
bold letters, a jumble of bones,
a shotgun shell & a slap of ink.

Blood poetry,
the poetry of unease.

Omar Musa

A gap opened every evening
emitting a panting – as soft as darkness,
or stray dog at exhaustion's end.
Unsettling, like a straggly bird,
it dropped dark feathers
of prickling desire into the room.
It knew the edges of solitude
like the blue glacier's encrusted ice,
and morphed into a clouded mirror
on which each searching glance stuck fast.

Paul Hetherington

I

Having narrowly escaped jetlag,
             I ate a mushroom omelette
             in Galata Square,
with wrinkled black olives
             on the side
                         like little black eyes.
             I washed it all down
             with coffee strong enough to wake the dead.

As I looked upon the ancient tower,
              the city came to life around me:
              tourists and cats and drunkards
              made their way across the square.

Over the next few hours,
I did edits on my novel,
              listened to an American family talk too loudly,
                           heard the cafe's Gypsy Kings CD
                                        mix with the call to prayer.

I updated my Facebook:
            'Hello Istanbul. What a city!
            I love this place sooo much.
            It is rainy & muddy & musical & full of life.'

When I got back to the hotel,
            the man at reception
            asked me what I was doing tonight.
I grinned and mimed drinking – rakia.
He smiled sadly, shook his head,
            and said, 'be careful.

The police killed a little boy.
He died yesterday.
The government does what it wants.
The police do what they want.
I am a Nationalist. I am supposed to be on the Right.
The Communists are supposed to be on the Left.
             But we have both joined against this government.
Do not go up Istiklal Street tonight,
             my friend.
Last night, it was like a war.
             Tonight again.
There will be nearly a million people.
Taksim Square will be like a war.'

His eyes were green and steady.

My hotel room smelled
of the cleaning woman's cigarettes.
I looked across
the rooftops and satellites with their faces to the sun,
and saw two minarets
and the dome of a mosque
across the Bosphorus.

As the city readied itself for
               protest and mourning,
               I burned my lips
               on the sunset.

II

I got lost looking for a trendy cafe,
ended up near Karakoy Port,
drank homemade lemonade in a side street,
climbed through an aristocratic neighbourhood
and found myself in Taksim Square.

There were students with pictures
of a young boy,

Berkin Elvan,

pinned to their lapels.
People in beanies and ballies
               thronged,
dressed mostly in black.
Shellfish and chestnuts
               were roasting
               on portable braziers.

There were choppers in the sky
              and so many sirens,
              and the whole place seethed
              with thousands of legs in fast forward.

Istanbul wasn't this cold last time.

I turned a corner and came
face to face with riot police,
close enough to see the scratches on their
semi-automatic weapons.

Close enough for one to blow smoke in my face.

III

When I got back to the hotel,
there was a new guy behind the desk.

He told me that he had worked in Taksim Square
a year ago.
'You should've seen it.
How exciting it was.'

His eyes shone.

'I like the smell of teargas.
Sometimes, it is necessary.'

IV

20 minutes later,
cops swarmed out
from every side street
like termites,
and opened onto civilians
with water cannons and tear gas.

V

Something drew me back to Taksim Square.

As I walked up Istiklal,
life seemed to carry on as usual:
                       Men sipped Efes from the can,
                       women with high cheek bones were smoked by cigarettes,
                       lamb cutlets smoked on grills,
                       mint tea steamed,
                       trinkets winked in the market.

Shops were still open, full of bored faces.
(I swear, the look of someone who hates their job
is universal.)

I started to see wet footprints,
becoming denser and denser on the concrete.

Then I heard a stamping, a chanting,
a banging on roller doors,
            the voice of a mob
like the bunching and unbunching of a fist.
It was up near Galatasaray High School,
where everything always kicks off (supposedly),
a square that leads north,
                                      south,
                                    east,
                                      west.

Then there was something
             like fireworks
             a phosphorescent scatter,
             the clatter of riot shields,
             the twack of baton on flesh,
             then a cheer,
             and the stampede of feet,
             and I was running with the crowd,
             unsure of where I was going,
             and there was danger, and fear,
             but also arms around shoulders,
             and laughter.

Istiklal had turned into a river,
but there were people
swimming upstream,
towards the maelstrom,
camera phones held aloft,
             shining beams,
                           like little lighthouses
                                         above the crowd.

VI

On the way home,
a kid tried to sell me a mask
to protect me from the teargas.

Just a few blocks away,
             things were quiet.
I passed wall upon wall of graffiti, thinking
             'Whoever DSK is,
              they run shit around here.'

The guy behind the counter
was more sombre now.

'I do not like protests.
I voted.
My best protest was at the election.'

VII

The news tells me
that two people are dead.

I lean out the window
and the wind is cold and fleet-footed,
as if it is being chased.

Omar Musa

They said,
'be afraid.'

And the people became afraid.

I stood,
              a dwarf in a petrified forest,
              watching them dance the ancient dance —
              there seemed joy in their terror,
              & laughter, too.

People baked bullets into their bread.
They chopped up newspapers
              & fried them
              with sliced onions & sizzling steaks.
They stroked surveillance cameras
              between their legs.
They treated TV screens like wells,
              dipping buckets into them,
              filling teacups
              & offering them to neighbours.

At times it held the shape of mirrors & men,
but mostly,
the fear spread across the waking earth
as if it were gas

              & gas expands to fill
              whatever vessel
              it is put in.

Today,
A man would not serve me at the supermarket.
A woman crossed the street to avoid me.
An anonymous email wished death upon me.

I, too,
became afraid.

Omar Musa

There was never an explanation
as to why he walked into the river,
took hold of a log
and floated away.
They found letters
but the love he expressed
in sometimes obsessive detail
was no explanation –
except, the coroner declared
that perhaps it indicated
'a lack of a grasp', etc.
Someone who saw him pass by
said that he was waterlogged;
another said he sat upright,
as if triumphant, and was singing;
a third (unreliable) party
stated that he rolled and turned
and was having trouble breathing.
The coroner said that 'unless a body', etc.
And, certainly there was a report
that he had, after all, survived;
had walked out of the water
near a remote village.
'It sounds implausible', the witness said,
who was rather bedraggled himself
with downcast eye,
'but he seemed to be smiling,
if shaking a little –
and appeared to be looking at something
not so far in the distance.
You know, like a thought
can sometimes hold a man.'

Paul Hetherington

We would sit on the wings of his knees
and see-saw our way through stories
              magical suitcases
                           Romanian folktales
              golden apples
                           and sea voyages
Sister and I
                           bookended
              holding each square corner
              and turning the pages

Sometimes it was pontoon
betting with matchsticks and forgetting
to hold the plastic cards out of sight
in our keen bending over the game

The tooth-cleaning song
upstairs and downstairs
and always ending with pie

Gathering leaves into high dry piles
with crinkly edges
in a navy roller-neck
Planting out and potting up
with rubber knee pads over the jeans
engaged in a small prayer service
to the row of terracotta pots laid out on the grass
and after offering fistfuls of potting mix to each
his large palms open on his knees
showed the black grains clinging along the creases

Unwrapping fish and chips from layers of grey grease paper
                         that the oil had already worked through
Singing Irish shanties
                         Scottish ditties
                                      gold rush songs in the car
and walking hand-in-hand across the car-park
               Playing squash together
the two of us in that odd white square
with old wooden rackets and older dunlops
the long reach of his hand letting him sit pretty in the centre
while I wove crazily about him in a mad maypole dance
                of sweat and the rubber slap of shoe-soles
with the tiny ball greying but warming over time
til it was a hot coal burning in the palm each time it was retrieved

Still the love of paprika and garam masala
                dukkah and kimchi
                             fennel seed
                curry powder
                             turmeric
biting on the bitter seeds and smiling
palmfuls flung into the pan with abandon
and the remaining powder clapped away in proud applause

And a very cold night in a tent to see Halley's comet
which I never saw
but swore I did with nods and ahs
when he pointed and held the binoculars for me
despite the fog-smudged sky
and over-night involved a mid-sleep trip
to the concrete toilet-block together in the blackness
and an impromptu run around the cold field
to warm ourselves in the strange emptiness

                         And parties where
       after egg and spoon
the orange wheelbarrow was filled with more than sister and me
           more even than all our small friends put together
                                      We would clasp the plastic rim
and it would buckle and tilt on a crazy angle
but he always got the big wheel turning
                            could always lift us
push us round the garden
no matter how many
how heavy.

Sarah Rice

Recording

'Dad' begins at 3:09

This cardboard prison they call an archive
is cold, airless and silent as death.
Floor to ceiling boxes contain voices
no longer heard yet still wailing within
and faces no longer seen yet still missing in a
jail of captured snippets, images and memories
like the severed heads and bleached bones of
dismembered bodies neatly locked away in the vaults
of museums and universities of the world
in the name of science or history or anthropology or
something else so important at the time that
justified the collection of bits and pieces of another –
the Other.
Reams of records tell how you measured
our heads with every western yardstick –
examined us through your voyeuristic lens,
scrutinised our children's fingernails under
microscopes and found them remarkably pale –
looked inside women's vaginas where
that rosebud is pink as pink is pink
despite the otherwise apparent differences
between black and white such as
intellect, industry and capacity to settle.
We are the inmates incarcerated within these
cardboard cells where every neatly dotted 'i',
and symmetrically crossed 't' screams out:
Read this Black angst against
these white pages.

Jeanine Leane

For Patrick White (1976)

When the Badtjala people discovered Eliza Fraser,
her story of cannibals devoured a history.
A century later when the Badtjala people
rescued Ellen Roxborough on the fringes of paradise
White's imagination captured the Aborigine –
the Blacks – for the nation.
When she ate Badtjala woman's flesh,
she swallowed us all and we passed through the
bowels of colonial mythology all over again.
Who are the real cannibals?

Jeanine Leane

The desert dreams of harvest,
of holy writ & rain.

The city dreams of ruin,
of upturned cars
& vine-dressed churches.

The tiger dreams of freedom,
of shaking loose the stake & chain
& racing into shadows
large enough to hold it.

But me?

I dream of you.

There was a time we collected
dolphin's teeth
& smoked fish on atolls,
Do you remember?

We star-peeked and longed for more,
running our hands at the side of the boat,
reading the ripples,
looking for a green tinge
on the belly of clouds
because that meant land & trees.

You told me that
a sunlit lagoon makes a cloud above it
incandesce.

You called me by my true name
& kissed me like I was fireproof,
proof that we
could turn the seam between our bodies
into the equator of a world
conceived in a dream.

When at last we found land,
we swam to the shore,
tossing our heads like young horses,
shaking salt from our hair.

We turned back to look at the ocean
with its broken face & merciless boom,
reflecting in pieces
a private, blood-lit dusk.

Omar Musa

One day,
after it has died,
we will hold a vigil for the moon.

We will burn candles,
cheap mimics of its light,
& utter prayers we forgot to utter

while it still lived.
And we will say,
'Remember how it
spoke to us its bone-coloured dreams?
Remember how it gave us hope
when all else seemed savage?'

And some will say it was carved
from whale bone,
while others will swear it was a coin
flicked from the thumb of God.

And Death will come down the alleyways,
ringing its bells & swearing its oaths,
singing its story through
the windows of a ruined world.

And the executioner will cry silently
for those he has slain.
He will caress their shadows
& tell them to run.

But he, they, us,
will have nowhere to go,
no final memory
but a taste of the moon,
who once so sweetly told us
of what we might dream.

Omar Musa

Life, like climbing, is best
accomplished if you don't look
down. Pressed up against the rock,

rock-face to face, one is safest.
Hands like to be busy, little nest-
builders, hunting for hand-

holds in the crevices and creases,
they work best in the dark,
by feel; creatures of tactility.

Feet too, like to work unhindered
by the head; plodders, doers, dour
followers of simple commands, the

dogs of the body; 'come' 'go' 'stay'.
The toes curl instinctually, toe and
ledge communicate directly. Spread-

eagled thus, we are strangely calm,
a flayed skin, stretched and pinned
at our four corners. Each hold hard

won, each inch fought for. Our centre
magically transported as each point
moves, tacked and re-tacked.

Always look the grey granite in the eye,
stare it down to its components, to bits
of black quartz and white quartz, to its

mineral heart. Look to the basest element.

Sarah Rice

No one is going to come and save you.
And because of this you must fold
your clothes at day's end

despite the urge to abandon them
to the backs of chairs. You must shake
the crumple of sleep from the sheet.

You must clean your teeth. Wash the teaspoons.
Fold your pyjamas too and lay the neat squares
to rest under your pillow of a morning

despite the fact that in a few hours all
will be done again in reverse. All will be undone.
And there will be no-one to see.

No one will know the bed corners were tucked
into triangles. No one will see the sleeves cross
empty arms against flattened chests and wait quietly.

No one will know if the spoon was licked before it re-
entered the jam jar. And no one will call you to bed
and to the relief of sleep. That midnight hour must be

crossed alone.

The curtains drawn and redrawn, drawn and erased.
Be wary of sitting too long in a warm place, of holding
cups of tea for too long, or lying in bed thinking in the morning.

Be up and doing, up and at 'em. Be the bird
that gets the worm before it eats the apple.
Try to resist writing poetry.

Sarah Rice

For the soft-handled horse-mane hair
of the half moon brush
The gleam of pewter, copper, glass.

For the carpet palimpsest of patterned lives
that lie layered in the deep pile – embedded
wine, coffee, blood, bread, skin, and ash.

For the possibility of preserving presence
and particularity in a photograph.

For the quiet reliability of maps that level
mountains, baptise stream and river
and christen streets. That make a flat
geometry of tower, plaza, town.
And tell you where you are
and where you are not
and where you are going
and how to get there.
That folds the city into squares.

For the iron will of the anvil
and other like instruments
that stay as they are and should be.

For tubes of paint and the infinite spectrum
that gives us sun yellow, yolk yellow
soft and safety yellow, sweet or sour and so on.

For luck on three legs, level tripod,
held steady so it doesn't run out,
with a knowledge the maker of stools
has over the maker of chairs.

For words, spoken, thought, written, read,
unsaid, drawn, erased.
For the silent letter, mute but needed
like the animating principle
that leaves the body lighter at death,
and is the weight of our final breath
The weight of silence lifted.

Sarah Rice

Timing and manner my mum would always say
and it's true, the how and when override the what
of what's said, and the same is true of poetry.

I don't think people remember their tone when speaking –
other people's yes, but not their own. Tone, like texture, is crucial
for the feel of things – is it honey or cactus, metal or water?

And if the words float toward you like ducks on a pond
looking for crumbs, or if they are the hard grit
embedded in a harsh wind as it lashes your face,

the words themselves matter less than the manner of their coming –
words that slip in to visit you in their night gown, or words that slip
their owner's leash and attack in packs and will not be called back.

Some words have tiny green tendrils that climb like pea shoots,
while others bite their nails and yours. It is a shame we cannot feel
the weight and warmth or will of saying, instead of what's said.

Sarah Rice

Recording

'The Saying and The Said' begins at 1:53

AdrianCaesar Adrian Caesar was born and educated in England, but has lived and worked in Australia for more than thirty years. Formerly Associate Professor of English at UNSW at ADFA, since leaving full-time employment in 2004 Adrian has occasionally taught creative woks of literary and cultural criticism and an experimental 'non-fiction novel', The White, which won the Victorian Premier's Award for non-fiction in 2000 and the ACT Book of the Year in 2000. His novel, The Blessing, was published by Arcadia in 2015. He has also published five books of poetry, the latest of which is, Dark Cupboards New Rooms (Shoestring Press, 2014). High Wire (2005) was shortlisted for the Judith Wright Prize in 2007. His work has recently featured in The Best Australian Poems 2014 and Dazzled – an anthology of poems long-listed for the inaugural University of Canberra's Vice Chancellor's International Poetry Prize.

State Editor's notes

'Adrian Caesar is ... a long-term Canberra resident who has a long-term involvement in the Canberra poetry community. He brings wit and precision to his carefully formulated but deeply felt works, and achieves a fine balance between technique and mood, and between the intimate and the public,' writes ABR's States of Poetry - ACT State Editor Jen Webb. Read her full States of Poetry introduction here.

States of Poetry

'Spring Fall'

'Crafting Consolation'

'Shell Burial'

'Charlotte's Grace'

'A Salutation'

Recordings

States of Poetry 2016 ACT Podcast | 'Charlotte's Grace' and 'Spring Fall' by Adrian Caesar

State Editor's notes

'Jen Crawford is ... a colleague at the University of Canberra, though she is a recent addition to the Canberra community. Her poetry includes various experimental moves and techniques, and her gentle but incisive poems provide a sense of air and space in their phrasing and in their lineation.' writes ABR's States of Poetry - ACT State Editor Jen Webb. Read her full States of Poetry introduction here.

Jen Crawford's notes on her States of Poetry selection

The sources for 'abandoned house music' include David Quammen's 1998 essay, 'Planet of Weeds', which imagines Earth ecology into and beyond mass extinction. The poem enters this territory too, via Christmas Island, under the sign of the koel, the 'nest-thief'. 'Lopping' is made of material cut from a report. 'Reshelve' draws from language gathered around Thai floods, Singapore's 'Penguingate' controversy and the pseudactaeon fly as a fire-ant control measure. 'did, have' is a travel journal, much of which was composed from conversations heard in London, Paris, and Palmerston North. 'Abandoned house music' and 'reshelve' appear in the chapbook lichen loves stone (Tinfish Press, 2015) and the book Koel (Cordite Books, 2016). 'Did, have' was published in the chapbook Napoleon Swings (Soapbox Press, 2009).

States of Poetry

‘did, have’

extracts from 'abandoned house music’

‘lopping’

‘reshelve’

‘umbrella’

Recording

#64 States of Poetry 2016 ACT Podcast | Extracts from 'abandoned house music' by Jen Crawford

#65 States of Poetry 2016 ACT Podcast | 'lopping' by Jen Crawford

#66 States of Poetry 2016 ACT Podcast | 'reshelve' by Jen Crawford

State Editor's notes

'Paul Hetherington is a colleague of mine at the University of Canberra, and is also a nationally and internationally recognised poet. His poems are very imagistic, full of affectual moments, and marry memory with possibility, offering windows into what it is to be human,' writes ABR's States of Poetry - ACT State Editor Jen Webb. Read her full States of Poetry introduction here.

Paul Hetherington on his States of Poetry selection

Two of these poems are ekphrastic. ‘The Black Dress’ refers to an actual painting, meditating on issues that the painting suggested; and ‘Eyes’ is a poem of notional ekphrasis – that is, it simultaneously evokes and ruminates on the painting it refers to which has no existence outside of the poem. The other three works – ‘Dwelling’, ‘Gap’, and ‘River’ are poems that attempt to speak laterally about loss, dramatising some of its occasions.

States of Poetry

‘Black Dress’

Recording

#57 States of Poetry 2016 ACT Podcast | 'Gap' and 'River' by Paul Hetherington

State Editor's notes

'Jeanine Leane brings a clear eye and narrative strength to a body of work that has a strong political edge. Her poems mix irony and humour with anger to generate a powerful reminder of the impact on indigenous Australia of the invasion and settlement of this land just over two centuries ago,' writes ABR's States of Poetry - ACT State Editor Jen Webb. Read her full States of Poetry introduction here.

Jeanine Leane on what drives her poetry

The Aunties who raised me, their stories of people and Country, and the resilience of Aboriginal people inspire me. Activism and the pressing need to correct this nation's history to include and continue to include the voices and experiences of Aboriginal Australians is the driving force behind my work. I believe that all Aboriginal writing is political and that poetry is an excellent medium to express untold and repressed histories of my people.

States of Poetry

'Cardboard Incarceration'

Recordings

#38 States of Poetry 2016 ACT Podcast | 'Lady Mungo Speaks' and 'Whitefellas' by Jeanine Leane

State Editor's notes

'Omar Musa lives in Queanbeyan, which forms part of the broader Australian Capital Region rather than the ACT per se. He is an important part of the local poetry scene: a rap poet who captures the visual and the visceral, and presents them in riveting, vibrant performances,' writes ABR's States of Poetry - ACT State Editor Jen Webb. Read her full States of Poetry introduction here.

Omar Musa's notes on his States of Poetry selection

I write a lot of my poems in a trance-like state, so the details of process are hard to recall and describing a poem's origins feels a little like speculation. Osip Mandelstam's poetry influenced 'Blood Poetry'. Growing up, visible from my bedroom window, there was a paddock where fennel grew, so I must have been describing that. Writing poetry that somehow both satisfies the reader and makes them uneasy is something I aspire to. My friend Jessica Wilczak, an astute reader, helped me sculpt this one a while after I scribbled it.

'The fear (unfinished)' was written in the aftermath of the Lindt café shootings, when I saw huge collective fear in Australia, among both Muslims and non-Muslims.

'Teargas Sunset (unfinished)': Last year, on the way to Macedonia to research my novel Here Come the Dogs, I stopped off in Istanbul, one of my favourite cities in the world, and accidentally got caught up in violent clashes between protestors and police. This is what I saw. Fun fact: there is a particular description in this that is exactly the same as one in Here Come the Dogs and I only just noticed it now. If anyone's read both, see if you can figure out what it is.

'Do You Remember?' was inspired by an exhibit I saw at Te Papa Museum in Wellington, New Zealand, about the ingenious and mind-boggling journeys Polynesian people took to populate the South Pacific. I suppose it was also an attempt to write a love poem of sorts.

'The Moon' was inspired by the executions of Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan in Bali, but not necessarily about them. It's about something else, but I'm still not quite sure what.

States of Poetry

State Editor's notes

'Sarah Rice is a visual artist and a philosopher as well as a poet, and those other practices emerge in her poetry. Her works are filled with verve and colour, and tackle bold and complex ideas in a language that delights the ear through its playful use of words, its lists, and its dense language,' writes ABR's States of Poetry - ACT State Editor Jen Webb. Read her full States of Poetry introduction here.

Sarah Rice's notes on her States of Poetry selection

First up I want to flag my love of words – in all their roundness and edginess, their text, texture, taste, and tenor. I love that feeling of a poem as a place where words come together to meet and greet – or as Judith Wright so eloquently puts it in 'Nameless Flower': 'word and word are chosen and met.'

I am particularly interested in the saying of poetry, as in 'The Saying and the Said', which was influenced by my reading of Levinasian philosophy – the idea of expression as a reaching out towards an Other. The weight of words and the warmth of words, as well as the silences ('Song of Gratitude') are all important to me.

Another critical influence is the effect my parents had on my poetic sensibility as well as on my life as a whole. 'Self-reliance', 'The Saying and the Said', and 'Climbing' are all part of what I like to think of as a series called 'what my ma taught me' – i.e. lessons to live by, and the difficulties one faces in living well – for instance, the struggle over how to set one's sights – what perspective to take, how long a view, and from what angle ('Climbing'). And of course, as seen in the ode to my father ('Dad'), the many joys he passed on to me, as well as the multitudinous small activities that make a man.

To conclude, it is really to 'small things' that I owe much of my poetry – each tiny artefact in the Canberra Museum and Gallery (CMAG) that inspired 'Song of Gratitude', and the small daily routines and rituals expressed in 'Self-reliance' that mark each small step we take in our climb through life.