By Chloe Wilson

That morning, in the mirror,
I’d pulled my draping cheek-skin upward.
I had shone, taut and foreign,
the gums and incisors
glistering with saliva.

While evening and the show crowds gathered,
I watched him. The chain glinked
as he traced his circle,
always stalking - even the grass
shivered under his breath.

Entering the ring, he beckoned
me to dance, laid one
paw on each shoulder
and rolled me in the dirt.

His mouth opened wide
as bedclothes, and I scented
the iron on his tongue
while he hinged his hips

and the crowd thought I was dying.

Tigers like to dine alone.
I knew this; yet stayed a moment
too long, waiting
for an invitation

and was not all that surprised
to find a joint of meat missing
from my thigh.

They hunt by pressing you
to their hearts, then
kicking out your insides
in a casual sweep.

There’s the danger.
Not, after all, in the teeth
but beneath the tail,
which, like a finger,
searches out any pleasures
the front end may have missed.

This one slid
his tongue along the contours
of my bowel,
sniffing like a sommelier.

That night, he cleaned himself
thoroughly, that supple
tongue spreading like a stingray
under the nails
and detailing the groin;

ignoring the crowd
nobly, as they shook
the metal bars
that keep them safe.

‘Hold That Tiger’ is featured in The Mermaid Problem, Chloe Wilson’s first collection that has been published as part of the APC’s 2010 New Poets Series, more details here.

WET WEDDING DRESS

By Michelle Murray

(Michelle Murray is our APC Cafe Poet at Cafelicious in Goolwa SA)

I know nothing
That much I know
I sit in the dark on this show
This fabulous, outrageous poetry show
There’s a zing in the updates
There’s a zest in the downloads
And I wonder how do I get in on this site?
Everyone’s running at speed
Like the coffee they get is ripe for this scene
While I lay, technologically stranded
With sultry wet waves
Of fresh water and saline
Immersing me in a timeless no -place
A place that has died
I can feel it you know
That something terrible happened here
Long ago?

I’m not celebrating this grand occasion
The cafe poet I am
It is a grief I can’t reach
That washes up
Like brackish fish bones
With the eyes poked out, you know?
That is where I write
And when I look at the fish
All I want to say to it is
I don’t know!

I have a plan
Oh it is grand
It is fabulous and wondrous and strikes a chord
But something flutters in my heart
Something about discord
And history and peoples
Where ignorance is no excuse when I sit in the poet’s chair
Yet I dare not declare
It is too early it seems
Cause why I am here
Is not fully revealed

Oh I wish the caravanserai of the festival didn’t pass
And that Melbourne left some of her she-blast!
But the truth be told that this town
Is sitting on a story so old
That dare I scratch at this weeping sore
And speak of this something I feel, like a brooding cold
…That I know nothing of…
…Yet cannot forsake…
Oh, should I have known
That to this town I’d be wed
In the black seaweed crepe
Of a siren’s wet wedding dress?

Well…
That is it!
I have a plan
I’ll sit and wait - and do my hair -
In time
Vessels of stories will pass through these waters
Then I’ll sing troubled mournful melodies
To compel them off course
And all those consignments of knowledge
Bound for distant ports
Will wash up on my shore!

autistic child with acute auditory processing disorder

by Melinda Smith

in the foetal position in the museum toilets, hands clamped over my ears, shrieking
trying to say there’s a dryer, there’s a dryer, any second now someone will set it off
the sound will be a faceful of boiling water

I’m sorry, your patient explanations are not getting through. It’s a very bad line.

at the indoor swimming pool, crouched behind the waterslide, poo-ing into my damp trunks
trying to say I have to get out, the echoes are attacking me in four dimensions, I’m on a bad trip and I can’t come down

at the backyard washing line, moaning and trying to burrow under the grass
trying to say there’s a bird, there’s a bird, it’s going to swoop down and screech in my ear
the sound will feel like an ice pick in my skull

Your cognitive behaviour therapy is not getting through at all. It is a very bad line.

at my cousin’s birthday party, buried under the lounge cushions and wailing like a siren
trying to say I can’t stand it, the music and the voices are tearing at me, pecking me apart like vultures

in my bedroom after school, kicking my three-year-old sister in the face
trying to say go away, go away, you’re noisy, you’re unpredictable
I’ve been clinging to a cliff face for six hours and you’re dangling yourself from my ankles

running across a six-lane road, terrified of a toy poodle on the footpath
trying to say there’s a dog, there’s a dog, it’s going to bark
the sound will slam into me like a sandpaper boxing glove

Your elaborate reward and punishment system, your guilt trips, your lectures, your bellowing and tears aren’t getting through either. This is a very bad line.

I’m on my first school excursion, going through the bus-wash and laughing with the other kids
I’m trying to say I can cope with this, I can even enjoy it
because you made me a schedule with lovely safe pictures and let me look at it all day

I am
a calm buzzy feeling of happy
the stuff I need seems to be getting through -
just not on the very bad line.

Melinda’s poem was chosen as the winner of the APC’s national Making Sense of It competition.

]]> http://www.australianpoetrycentre.org.au/?feed=rss2&p=1107 http://www.australianpoetrycentre.org.au/?p=1086 http://www.australianpoetrycentre.org.au/?p=1086#comments Wed, 28 Apr 2010 05:47:28 +0000 admin http://www.australianpoetrycentre.org.au/?p=1086 SALT ON THE TONGUE

Chris Wallace-Crabbe

We just can’t do without it, watery friends,
acrid sodium chloride, the spice of our lives
adding that Certain Something as a poem does:
our mineral tang of wry intensification
used even by the scribeless tribes for money.
Lacking it, life would be insipid;
poetry zings on the lolling tongue
having crept up on you,
quiet as a glittering lizard
or the water swelling in at last
by parched banks.
Between these angular crystals and
their dark blue sea we live.

]]> http://www.australianpoetrycentre.org.au/?feed=rss2&p=1002 http://www.australianpoetrycentre.org.au/?p=967 http://www.australianpoetrycentre.org.au/?p=967#comments Thu, 04 Mar 2010 04:26:35 +0000 admin http://www.australianpoetrycentre.org.au/?p=967 Sweeping

Tricia Dearborn

Nearly every time I take the short-cut down this
curving street I see you, sweeping the grassy verge
outside your home or doggedly chasing a single leaf.

You’re always in curlers with a scarf tied round them
and wearing something that looks like the seersucker
brunch coat my grandmother made me when I was nine.

I want to sit us on the ground, lean you back against
my knees, remove the scarf, take out the curlers
one by one and loose each curl with tender fingertips,

then take the hands that grip the broom and say, Come on,
let’s paint the town! Go dancing, drink cocktails, smoke cigars,
take coffee at a rakish hour … We’d come home as the sun

crept up and with the broom I’d gather leaves to make
a crisp lush bed where we would take our pleasures, my
fingers in your curls for all the neighbourhood to see.

by Leah Kaminsky

ZAKA - members of this organisation, most of whom are Orthodox Jews, aid in the identification of the victims of terrorism and other disasters, gathering body parts and spilled blood for proper burial.

after the blast he fell apart
they found his left arm on Hechalutz Street
his right foot on Ha’atzmaut
and his hat, corner Herzl and Nevi’im

they came from ZAKA to piece him back together
those pious men with beards and sidecurls
a mitzvah* so holy to bury him whole
they placed bits of liver into zip-lock bags

when he was new
body parts would hold tight
no crushed ribs or squeaky joints
nowadays his feet are bound with tape

they couldn’t find all of him
so they went downtown
to the toyshop near Suidan’s bakery
and asked for spare parts

Abu Musa rummaged through an old box
of noses, ears and smiles
and kindly donated
a moustache to the cause

at the funeral Potato Head stood one-eyed
on the freshly dug grave
and wished they made accessory tears
he could slot inside his plastic heart

*mitzvah - good deed