Writer's Spotlight
shalom
Jeanne Hugoe-Matthews
gentle sun
soft wind
waves shush and hiss
froth white lace against warm sand
blessed space
to breathe
to dream
to wonder
to be
still
This poem was Commended in the
2004
Cedarvale Rainforest Literary Awards
Almost
Robyn Rowland
Blind to feeling he fumbles confused in the braille of
beginnings,
language unknown, terrain impossible.
You know his world is torn.
But when he sees you, and you see him, you know by recall
what it is to be loved by someone warm, and dark and tall:
the scent of him, the fold of his embrace safe as angels' wings,
his sighs breathing hot words into the twilight of possibility.
You remember the colour of his eyes;
his long fingers on the bow
drawing out 'Fascination' from the strings;
the welcome, lovely aging of his face that mirrors yours.
Burn of his gaze flares up dreams;
sears your heart with longing,
trembling from its slippage into hope.
Night crowded with stars,
his mouth roams the arch of your neck;
tongue stirs slumbering desire,
rising phoenix into febrile flesh
from catacombs of subterranean yearning
where loneliness slouches,
paws red-raw from pacing.
You want him. You want him.
Hot from the desert of solitude you drink in that first kiss
he retrieves within a day:
'mistakes are made' he says.
Dogs howl down the empty street.
And in another night, he chooses her.
'Almost' is a poem from Robyn's book 'Shadows at the Gate' –
Five Islands press available at Griffiths book shop and Torquay newsagency.
Doctor
Joan Kerr
When
the phone rings in the night to tell him someone's died
not unexpectedly, and without giving trouble,
he thinks as he lies down of the hurt red setter
he had to shoot, what, forty years ago? His heart flinches
again.
His house flowering quietly around him
in this contented suburb, he lies awake until
the trees step out of the shadows. Fifty.
He wonders what he did for the rest of that day
and why he's never seen, these forty years,
those trees with the ripped and shaggy bark
and under it, the silky heifer skin. That sky
so clean and glittering
it makes
you want to weep.
Gravel Stories
Brendan Ryan
He was turning into his gateway
when he was struck from behind.
Fog had stolen the road
barbed wire couldn't hold back the quiet
or the farmer
trying to believe what the fog revealed:
his brother dead and a neighbour
shaking against the side of a car.
Road accidents, suicides, careless deaths
a district catches its breath
and memories trail a family's name:
his son getting through the fence with a shotgun
her parents cleaned up by a milk tanker.
Talk around the kitchen table
slows down to a stare out the window
a shaking of the head, questions.
They sat a stubby on the grave
of a footballer everybody knew
then drank the afternoon to his name.
Somewhere near the Drive-in
they rolled and she flew
like a story itching to be told.
Gravel Stories has been previously published
in Famous Reporter 25, June 2002
Carpet Sharks
Graeme Kinross-Smith
quitting air finning
down seeking
all time in
water
under the overhang
deep twenty feet
three sharks have always parked
like camouflaged staff cars
gill slits pulsing breathing aeons
i can't share heirs
to a billion
pristine
noons
fronts and news and months stutter
through bass strait
but down in this
green-blue dark
earth's history
is modern trim
i swim closer
blunt timeless heads
eyeing me but
not about
to budge
Travel writing from Geelong Writers
at Polyglots at Pako 2004
Come with Me to the Casbah
Veronica Schwarz
Recently, I returned to Europe and, while in Spain, took a trip
to Morocco. Except for the terrible hassling from the sellers of everything and
anything, I enjoyed it very much. The architecture is exquisite. The cities
are a mixture of modern and medieval or earlier. Every city has its medina or
casbah - which is the old walled city centre with winding streets where you
can touch the walls on either side without stretching. The only traffic is
donkey.
The ferry ride from Spain to Tangiers was an instant cultural shock. The
concept of a queue seemed beyond the Moroccan imagination. Queued up to get
through immigration from Spain to Morocco before boarding the ferry, I was
elbowed aside with the greatest panache by men, women and children alike.
Getting off the ferry, I again queued for miles but this time I was more
savvy and the narrow passageway made it possible for me to block the weavers
and divers and maintain my position.
Once I got off the ferry and through customs in Tangiers, I got
on the bus and did a city tour before heading south to the capital city,
Rabat. Spent the night there and, the next day, I went sightseeing - by bus
and foot. The local guide was a very educated young man and a champion of
women's rights. Apparently, the young king of Morocco is trying to change the
laws to improve the status of women. There is a lot of support but also a lot
of opposition. The king has, however, made it very difficult for any man who
isn't very wealthy, to have more than one wife. The new laws state that a man
must treat his wives equally. One consequence of this is that if one wife has
a house all the wives must have a house. A bit of a downer. A man must also
get the permission of his first wife before he can marry another.
But onward ever onward – Casablanca was my next stop. Not a
glimpse of Bogey or Bergman, just a modern port city. The mosque there is
probably the most beautiful building I've ever seen. I haven't seen the Taj
Mahal but this mosque was breathtaking. I'm usually a minimalist but the
Moorish/Arabic art, although complex, is so tasteful and fine and the colours
are so delicate, I loved it.
This was the first day of Ramadan and all the people were
fasting during the day. Consequently, all the restaurants were shut and most
of the shops. What a hoot. I had to eat at McDonalds. How ironic - come to
Casablanca and dine at Macca's. But it was on the greatest location. Right on
the seashore with the waves of the Atlantic crashing in just in front of me
as I munched my Big Mac.
I travelled from Casablanca to Marrakesh. Again the exquisite
architecture. Spent two nights in Marrakesh. Took a trip into the Atlas
Mountains to visit a Berber village and enjoyed the hospitality of a Berber
family. Mudbrick houses, animals living downstairs, people upstairs. They did
have a TV and a mobile phone though!! Visited the Marrakesh market which is
supposed to be very famous. Managed to avoid buying anything.
From Marrakesh to Fes and more exquisite architecture and
casbah and markets and finally into Ceuta which is on the coast of Northern
Africa but is a Spanish enclave. From there I took a fast ferry back to
Spain. No hassles, no queues. Great. I was delighted to hear Spanish again
and be able to read signs and know what was going on around me. But I'll
never forget that architecture.
Driving to Adelaide Writers' Week
Yvonne Adami
Out here
between
the lonely towns
of silos and weathervanes
light pours down
the unrelenting sky
to paddocks ridged
with the harsh stroke
of a Drysdale brush
Crows wing-beat the still air
their cries fall to the thin dry line
of earth below
We barely stir
This land has stilled our tongues
House in Winter
Yvonne Adami
A low pressure system in the Bight brings rain to the
South-West
The stubborn days pile up
against the doors
Out of some dark corner
of the past
the sea fog gathers here
as grey as gulls
Voices slide the sheer edge
of the drowned window
After the War in Slovenia
(excerpt from 'Maria's Story')
Maria Pantik
It took me four days to return home to Slovenia. I carried with
me a small bag of my clothes. It was springtime so it was not so cold
walking. In between I came to the houses close to the road and I asked the
people if I could sleep there and could they billet me. I did that for three
nights. The strangers treated me very well and gave me food.
After the war life was just terrible. Worse than before. People
stole food so there was no food for us. Shops were empty. There was almost
nothing to eat.
The Partisans came and they started killing people. They wanted
a new regime. They took people into the forest and killed them. We survived
somehow. My mother kept a garden and we had a few pigs and hens so we were
happy to be.
The communists did take over and killed many people. They put
the dead bodies in the street, dead bodies just sitting on seats in the road
with a sign, 'If you don't listen to what we say, the same thing will happen
to you.'
This would be just maybe a hundred metre away from where my
parents lived. There was a little place full of trees, and in the night they
killed a woman, a pregnant woman there.
Life was just terrible. Anyone who opposed the Partisans could be killed.
About a year after the war was finished, I found a job in a
restaurant in Tujk for just for a few hours a week…
Travels in America
Mavis Wood
The train lingo, one de-trained, never got off; one purchased a
beverage to consume in the lounge car, never just a drink. The prisons we saw
en route were correctional facilities. In the snack bar there was a variety
of foods available to be eaten either at the tables there or at your seat. If
one went to the dining car by yourself one was a party of one. Happy hour meant
Margharitas for $2 each and a free wine glass (plastic) of nibblies.Very
nice!
Crack, crack. We ducked, two windows on the bus shattered. We were being shot
at or so we thought. A young black youth sitting on the long front seat had
glass all over his hair and shoulders. The driver pulled into the side of the
road, 'What was it? Anybody see?'
A hubbub broke out, one bloke had seen kids behind a wall throwing stones at
the bus. She examined the boy, gathering the glass from his hair and
shoulders. Another woman used the water from her water bottle to damp a cloth
to pick up the slivers. 'You'd better go home and get a shower,' she said.
The driver issued us with slips of paper on which to record what we had seen.
No one panicked, perhaps we were the only ones who had thought of guns, but
then we'd been thinking of earlier luxurious ways of travel and debating
whether we should go to the AM/PM Stores or McDonalds for tea ...
Jerusalem
Saturday 13 September 2003
Marion Petersen
We have visited the Western Wall several times now, but last
night's visit was quite an experience, as we went in the early evening by
which time the Jewish people had gathered welcome the Shabbat in prayer. The
area immediately in front of the Wall is an open air synagogue, which is
divided into two areas, a small section at the southern end for women and the
larger, more active section for men. The Jewish people pray with much more
joy and enthusiasm than we would engage in, and groups of mainly men, kept
bursting into dance and song, as part of their prayer. We also saw one group
form up on top of the stairs of one of the entrances and dance and sing their
way across to the wall.
There are certainly armed soldiers and police, and checkpoints
around the Western Wall area in the Old City, but not as many as there were
in Manila. The thing is, here they are all bits of kids, doing their National
Service. We haven't seen anyone over about 25 years in uniform yet.
The night of the suicide bombing in the café we heard the
sirens, as it was not all that far away in an affluent area of Jerusalem, but
being the 'innocents' that we are, we didn't realize the significant of all
the racket until the next morning. There was a minor incident yesterday, in
the early pm, when some Palestinian youths apparently threw stones from the
vicinity of the Al-Aqsa Mosque at some Israeli soldiers, who promptly
responded with a few rounds of tear gas. Thankfully it was all over before it
had the chance to get out of hand.
I can't get over the difference in the children here – there
are no smiles, and they have a look about them, particularly the girls, of
weariness. No child should look like this - they look worn out already.
The Dead Sea
Monday 22 September 2003
Marion Petersen
Getting in isn't much fun, due to all the rocks and stones, and
very few people, my self included, manage to do it with any sort of grace or
style. When I first went in I did wonder what all the fuss ! was about, but
very quickly discovered the wonders of it all. I stood, out of my depth,
without having to tread water, bobbing about just like a cork in water. Had
this incredible sense of weightlessness. Also sat, without sinking, just as
you would in a chair, and laid back, hands behind my head, ankles crossed,
just floating along. As the water dries on your skin grains of salt form a
coating, which feels and looks pretty odd. Even had grains of the stuff in my
ears. But hey, it stings and wasn't all that funny when I got some in my eye,
or in the little breaks in my skin. It was fantastic, but like all good
things, had to come to an end - I eventually I had to get out, as I was
starting to get sea sick!
A Soldier and his Gun
(an extract from Archipelago, a work in progress)
John Bartlett
Paul floats in the crowds. He is a cork tossed on a stormy sea,
one among twelve million in the streets of Manila. Everyone is too close.
There's no space left for him. People bump him and carry him along. It is
frightening. It is exciting too. He is a balloon tossed back and forth.
Floating free and unrecognisable.
'Hello Joe.' The greeting is like a slap across the face. He is
white and therefore American.
Paul has come to Manila to have his diarrhoea treated. The doctor diagnoses
amoebic dysentery and prescribes a variety of drugs. This explains the loss
of weight and the constant fatigue.
The old Chinese doctor likes to play his cards both ways. He recommends a
diet of twenty bananas a day and suggests that Paul stay in Manila for a
couple of weeks and rest.
Sean O'Connor has come to Manila for a break too. Not that he
seems to need it. He just wants to get back to work and forget what has
happened. Not on the island anymore. He has volunteered for a parish as far
away from the sea as possible in the mountains of Mindanao working amongst
Christians and Muslims. He is from Belfast himself so should know something
about working for peace.
Paul has these weeks to himself. Free in a strange city. He
holds that feeling of freedom to his chest like a precious guilty gift. He
savors the sweetness of being unknown amongst so many people. He walks on
past the beckoning outstretched hands of men outside the 'go-go' bars of
Quezon Boulevard. Some of these are owned by Australians too he remembers.
Their flashing lights change his face from red to green to blue. Here, women
in G-strings gyrate pelvises around stainless steel poles on platforms above
the men drinking below.
The women chew gum and think of their children squatting in the
dust far away in mountain villages cared for by loving grandparents.
Fiji
(from travel diary July 20 2000)
Wendy Ratawa
Breathing
the long night of the curfew, silent, unholy night, not even the howl of
sirens at the change of shifts in the factories. No boats are stirring in the
pond that is Walu Bay. No traffic in the street except one or two moving
along the road, people with clout, people with a military pass. The family
stay on at Navuso, not daring to run the gauntlet of the curfew by poling by
moonlight on the punt across the Rewa in hope of a taxi for the thirty minute
ride back. I'd said, 'Stay the night there, don't rush. Think of the
children. Think of military road blocks in the night, searching cars, the
fright of black guns for the three year old.'
Culture of peace, what a lark.
Glitter
Anthony Lynch
Here the brief dreams of the mollusc
have surfaced.
Such a beautiful
contained rash,
such a shrill whisper,
so many memories of sunlight.
There must be more to water
than molecules.
Gulls and terns stalk
thinking something might be caught
and swallowed.
'Glitter' was first published in Salt-lick
Quarterly, Spring 2003, p. 11.
Mother Takes a Photo
Bev Roberts
For years we're separated
by more than place,
relieved not to be family.
Here's a rare sight, then,
she catches us standing
together
runs with the camera
we step apart
she pulls us back
arranging a family.
We're laughing,
We had been talking about her.
Squinting through the Kodak
she sees a family.
We make silly faces
to keep the camera honest.
It will frame only
three old children
making silly faces.
from 'My Sister and Silence'
Bev's
poetry books are available from the author. Email: blackrob@ozemail.com.au
Silent Sentinel – Barwon Grange
Lorraine Lee
There you stand proud beauty
Silent survivor of early days
Built from dreams and hope for the future
Historic sentinel
You present to impress
Elegant in every way
River views
Bow humbly beneath your gaze
Three babies were born
During your construction
But each in turn
Died young
Their little feet never grew
To joyfully patter
Across your floors
Instead sadness came to knock upon your door
Your owners loved you
And lived in you
For one year
During which time
A fourth baby was conceived
Until then the sadness was hard to bear
The choice was made
England offered a safer environment
For the baby who survived into manhood
You survived too
Thanks to the efforts
By quite a few
Your rare beauty
Attracts us still
Our greatest hope
You always will
Lorraine was invited to read this poem at the National Trust
opening of the original carriage way from Fyans Street into Barwon Grange.
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