Consent

Performed at GLITTER, Spoken Word Perth, May 2016 @ Paper Mountain Gallery


friend’s message on facebook reveals her disguise
of sexual pureness, a fabrication of lies
that hides the pain of consent stripped away
the horror that resides in her everyday

and I feel it, the pain of a past you can’t speak
the shudders in shop fronts, the shuffling of feet
subtly avoiding any spaces of fear
silent shadows, sharp corners, the stench of cheap beer

on another’s mouth, or another’s skin
innocent intoxication turned sinister grin
that snarls through nightmares, alone in her bed
his hands always present, always there in her head

former frame of fluidity reduced to regret
hip bones, now haunted, the site of lament
rib cage protrudes from translucent skin
starvation an escape from the body she’s in

my body is a prison, my body is a crime scene
my body is a puzzle and I don’t know what it means
my body isn’t mine, my body isn’t home
my body is broken and the cure remains unknown

I’m messaging my friend, she’s too far away to hold
I want to tell her it gets better, not each season is this cold
but my strength still shivers and my palms are turning pale
haunted by the malice which the human race entails

patriarchy perpetuates the purpose of penetration
as proving your penis has power past procreation
but my body is no piñata and there is no prize
for whoever hits it hard enough, whoever parts my thighs

she was asking for it
asking for it
asking for

I was asking for it
asking for it
asking for

consent.


Maddie Godfrey (Western Australia / UK)
Facebook: maddiegodfreypoet

From Maddie's zine Warm

Alberta Bound

I own a gate to this prairie
that ends facing the Rocky Mountains.
They call it Alberta,
trail of endless blue sky,
asylum of endless winters,
hermitage of indolent retracted sun.
Deep freeze drips haphazardly into spring.
Drumheller, dinosaur badlands, dried bones,
ancient hoodoos sculpt high, prairie toadstools.
Alberta Highway 2 opens the gateway of endless miles.
Travel weary I stop by roadsides, ears open to whispering pines.
In harmony North to South
Gordon Lightfoot pitches out
a tune,
‘Alberta Bound.’
With independence in my veins,
I am long way from home.


Michael Lee Johnson (USA)

Inconvenient Numbers

The video is a slightly shortened version of the following poem.

When a tower falls elsewhere, the ash settles in my city.

I study how heavy the air becomes. I try to make peace with war; instead I learn lessons in rupture. What it means to not know.
How to be okay with not knowing.
How to search for answers through the past.

In the year 1978 —
          soft brown shoulder-length curls
          big eyes and a milky complexion —

my mother is ten years old when a nun at her convent dies.
She is buried in a black cloak.
          With school closed for the day,
          death comes wrapped in a caravan of joys.

When my grandfather tells her God listens to the prayers of children,
she prays for a nun to die every night
so she can stay home from school.

In the winter of 2001,
          I am ten years old.

The city my mother once knew sits on an altered map.
The planes have changed direction —
the high-rises my grandfather built
          have crumbled into debris.
          The clouded smoke that stood around New York
                    has long dissipated into Lahore, and Islamabad, and Karachi,
                    all across the playgrounds of my mothers childhood,
                    into the sanctity of my grandparents home.

A generation later,
I have no need for wishing stars —
bomb threats become routine and keep me home from school.

Back in 1978 my mother would spend her nights stargazing:
          It used to be so quiet, she tells me.

But in 2012
God watches over a different city —
          the drum of dulled heartbeats shines brighter than the most vibrant skies,
          the night is girdled with funeral processions
          and there is a faint rumbling over the mountains targeted as terrorist bases where civilians live.
                    Their screams are a backdrop melody,
                    a ripple in an ocean full of water:

we are told to ignore the white noise.
          Their bodies become sites of target practice —
          blindfolded and bound
                    they are dropped to the ground like lines of dominoes
                    They are torched into embers without warning
                              and the night burns,
                              somewhere a cricket chirps,
                              and still,
                              it is a hollowed silence.

In a few years when the numbers are tallied
          and the ash cloud dissipates,
the dead will be statistics on charts we will study when regret won’t matter anymore.

          In the year 1978 my mother did not know
          when you wish death upon someone else
          you begin to write your own eulogy
                    you are asking God
                              to turn your gardens into battlefields
                              to bury your nation
                              as you watch your city’s skin wither into ash —

ash skin is not a prayer that ever falls onto a wishing star from the lips of those who have something to lose.
          My mother didn’t know how much she had to lose once.

Now no matter how hard she tries she cannot take back her wish
          or bury it beneath a black cloak —
                    black cloaks cannot hold the scars of our sins:

                    our mistakes become unholy
                    when we choose to hide them.

So listen to the white noise;
                    it is the sound of a people burning,
                              torched by those who never realised
                                        a wish once made can never be undone.


Zainab Syed (Western Australia / Pakistan)

open home

an so it is so i look inside
an i see wot i want
so she sezta me ya gotta take a chans
an i saw ta meself all them fings i like
thay ar jus wot she likes
an i carnt see eny reezin wy not
cos th sine sez its open an its home
an nobody mus be livin ther
cos th dor is open like thay sez
an evrythn is jus ther for evrywn to like

an then im inside an im lookin aroun
an my eys kinda gettin ussta it
til its not dark eny more
so i can see all thees fings
an i jus no sheel like em jus like i wd
an so i look aroun an kinda make a list
like wen ya go shoppin or wot ya want
for crissmus in case enywn evva shoz up
wen ya sposed ta be sleepin
an not holdin ya breth or jus pretendin

so therz a big room now
an im lookin aroun wv me list in me hed
but its a bit mixt up cos i keep seein
fings that i like an i no she likes
an fings i dunno wot thay ar
but thay look kinda cool an maybe cost a lot
an yeh maybe sheed reely like em 2
an yeh i wish she wos here yeh here wv me
so then i cd aks her
an then she cd tell me wot she reely likes
now my heds in a spin an i dunno wotta do
cos therz 2 meny fings to choos

but i don wonta make her sorry
an ya don get a chans like this very offen
so i turn roun wv me eys still sorta gettin ussta it
an i see a pitcha an i stop but i dunno wy
but enyway i look clos an pick it up
an it sorta makes me wonta cry
so i stop wile i can jus in case in case
she trys ta tell me sumfin diffrent

so then its sif im havin a dreem
sif im finkin about wen i was littel
wen she was warm an she had pretty hair
an flowrs an she ussta hol me hand doun the beesh
an showd me birds an shyny fish an seeshels
or sung me songs i didden unnerstan
nah but then ther wos a storm or a fire
an peepel havin fites or sumfin ya no
punchin an yellin all kindsa stuff i didden get
cos it wos dark an i wos jus ther by meself

an now she sezta me ya gotta go son
ya shouldna be here ya gotta find the lite
an follo it home 2 ya reel home
yeh i rekkin yeh but i dunno wotta do
cos i seen so meny fings i no sheel like
an i wanna giv her sumfin so she noz
im still here an this is an open home
jus like it sez on the sine out th front
an then maybe sheel tell me
wy i still got all thees tearz in me eys


Ian Gibbins (South Australia)

Politics

C S Hughes

Mandatharra

on the road to the vanishing point
we layered our story
over the Inggarda stories

ice age, crinoids, early
Permian, ancient sea bed,
quartzblow, sandstone
plateau, elevated,
compressed, faulted,
uplifted

on the road of smashed bones
corpses unburied
spat to the side
the road of sliced rubber
we picked up Daniel
his tyre the road’s latest meal
out there on the horizon
heat turns distance to water
and waves
we asked what do you call the blue smudge
map-named for a pastoralist’s wife

in his grandmother’s country
he can’t say
he can’t say
he can’t say the name

on the road to the vanishing point
the road of broken bones and sliced rubber
our tongues strangle names
he can.


Coral Carter (Western Australia)

The sound

Jackson (Western Australia)
From the album The right metaphor
First published (in text) on the author's website Proximity.

Angry Young Girls

Sue Clennell (Western Australia)
Read by Mags Webster
From Sue's CD The Van Gogh Cafe

The Thracian

Sue Clennell (Western Australia)
Read by Mags Webster
From Sue's CD The Van Gogh Cafe

twenty six

 
Simon Paul (Western Australia)
 

Harbour Noir

Liana Joy Christensen (Western Australia)

First published in Performance Poets, Fremantle Press 2013

Editor's note: MUA stands for Maritime Union of Australia. ‘MUA Here to Stay’ is their slogan.

Swaddled

My tongue rolls out
Onto the floor
Freshly amputated
From the red couch's door

And like a mattress-made raft
It startin' to drift and stray
Into the sea's red-heaving sway

It's time to switch off the placenta
And be torn from these womb walls
As this room falls
Into a new nightmare.
Fitting way too tightly,
It's more than I can bear.

And Lo!
I am cloudy essence
Slow leaking
From a swaddle of blankets.





Steve ‘JC the Voyeur’ (Western Australia)

An image by our featured poet

Initially NO (Victoria)

Andrea Morning: a song by our featured poet

Danny Gunzburg (Western Australia)

paint flow (a photograph by our featured poet)

Click the image to view a larger version.

Coral Carter (Western Australia)


First published on Coral's photography blog, Rubbish Photographer

Some jewellery by our featured poet

Tuart in silver with Zambian amethyst and citrine
Made by our May 2013 featured poet, Tineke Van der Eecken, for the Into Eternity exhibition at Elements Art Gallery.

Val di Mello

Quotes in Italian from Quando finisce un amore by Riccardo Cocciante (Quando si vuole bene, Boventoon bv, 1986)

I feel the softness of my blouse as your hand touches it
You flick me a smile
Silk is the fabric of love, you say
In Italian it sounds even better

Quando finisce un amore

Your words, your hands, your look make me
buzz and hover like a honeybee
It's just what I need
at twenty-three and about to leave
the world I know

On your Yamaha 650
you take me to your favourite place
the wind around our bodies
the snow high on the Alps

Val di Mello, the valley of honey
the grass is a feather quilt
the water is golden
Its glistening froth clings to the rocks
floating, holding on to something
already gone

Your love sticks to me like honey
Quando finisce un amore, when love ends

Because of Val di Mello
because you — us — are not real
because a black hole is forming
a new home without you

Once, on the dark continent, I write to you
in my Italian latinizzato, as you call it,
but I don't hear you say this
I don't see your glorious smile,
I don't feel your hands reaching for mine
I don't sense the empty seat behind you on the Yamaha

Quando finisce un amore

Feel a knot in my throat
a hole in my stomach
an emptiness in my head
and understand nothing.

Quando finisce un amore
ti senti un nodo nella gola
ti senti un buco nello stomaco
ti senti un vuoto nella testa e non capisci niente

Then one morning,
a letter from you,
sent many months before
plans to visit,
now long gone


Tineke Van der Eecken (Western Australia)

First published in Poetry d'Amour 2013 (WA Poets Inc 2013).

Drip Drip

drip drip
drip drip
tap drips
drip drip
drips tap
can't sleep
drip drip
sleep drip
can't dream
drip drip
dreams drip
drip drip
drip night
night drips
drip drip
drip drip
drip demons
demons drip
drip drip
drip trip
trip drip
drip drip
flip drips
drips flip
flip drips
drip drip
dawn drips
drips dawn
drip drip
day drips
drips day
day day
drip drip
drip drip
drip


Patrick McManus (UK)

From On The Dig (Frisky Moll Press 2010)

UK poet Patrick McManus reading at Raynes Park Music Club

Here's an entertaining performance by UK poet and painter Patrick McManus, author of  Ready Mixed Aggregate (Hodgson Press 2010) and various chapbooks.

This is the cover of 'Ready Mixed Aggregate':

A graphic by our featured poet

An artwork by our featured poet for February 2013,
Neil J Pattinson (Western Australia).